CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES 




MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO 

THP: MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



CHILDREN 
OF THE SLAVES 



BY 

STEPHEN GRAHAM 

AUTHOR OF " THE QUEST OF THE FACE." ETC. 



MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 

1920 



£185" 



COPYRIGHT 



€l\-\^^^ 



NOTE 

This book will be published in America under the 
title oj " The Soul oj John Brown T I wish to thank 
all those Americans who helped me and especially Miss 
Nanny Burroughs of Lincoln Heights, Mrs. Cohen- 
Bell of New Orleans, Miss Moses of Norfolk, Mr. 
Charles Banks of Mound Bayou, Mr. Benjamin 
Brawley of Atlanta, Mr. Walter White of the 
N.A.A.C.P., Dr. Du Bois, and many other 
coloured men and women who gave me introductions, 
printed matter, direction, etc. ; also the Lafayette 
Players for much pleasure in New York ; also 
Mr. Bolton Smith of Memphis for a voluminous 
contribution of pamphlets and papers, and Miss 
Frelinghuysen for the use of a book. In England 
I wish to thank Sir Harry fohnston, G.C.M.G., 
K.C.B., etc, who very kindly read the proofs. 

Some sections of this volume appeared this year 
in Harper s Magazine, and I beg to thank the 
editor also for permission to reproduce them. 

STEPHEN GRAHAM 



CONTENTS 



1. Thoughts on Slavery 
II. In Virginia . 

III. Orators and Actors, Preachers and 

Singers . . . . 

IV. In Tennessee .... 
V. Marching through Georgia 

VI. Tramping to the Sea 
VII. After the War : the Vote 
VIII. In Alabama : Colour and Colour Pre 
JUDICE .... 

IX. The Southern Point of View 
X. Exodus .... 
XI, In North Florida and New Orleans 
XII. The New Negro Mind 

XIII. Negro Leadership 

XIV. The World Aspect 
XV. Up the Mississippi 

XVI. At Vicksburg 
Bibliography . 
Index . 



I 

64 

89 

no 

141 

170 

181 
196 
215 
222 

243 
261 

268 

284 

302 

307 
309 



ILLUSTRATION 

The Lynching Crowd around the Negro it has burned 

Face 100 



Vll 



The Negro slaves were released in i86j. 
They and their children number twelve 
millions out of a total of a hundred 
millions of all races blending in America. 
Where do the children of the slaves stand 
to-day ? 



THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 

Although Charles Lynch of Virginia used to 
suspend British farmers by their thumbs until 
they cried out Liberty for ever ! and lynching 
,has continued ever since, America is neverthe- 
less at bottom free, or at least was intended to be 
so by the idealists and politicians who brought 
her forth. America is a living reproof of Europe, 
and it has been generally conceived of as a land 
where men should suffer no encroachment upon 
their personal liberty, where they should reap 
duly the fruits of their labours, where no man 
should sap their rugged independence or infringe 
upon the sovereign equality of their social rights, 
where government should be entirely by consent 
of the governed, not handed down from above 
as from superior beings or masters, but controlled 
from below, from the broad base of toiling 
humanity. 

The first discoverers were plunderers and 
seekers after barbaric gold and gems, but her 
real pioneers were God-fearing men who laid 
the foundations of modern American civilisation 
by honest work and a boundless belief in the 

I B 



2 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES i 

development of free democracy. The institu- 
tion of slavery was therefore the thing which in 
theory was most abhorrent to the American 
mind. It is a curious anomaly that a very short 
while after the Declaration of Independence the 
land from which America separated became free 
of slavery and the British flag pre-eminently 
the flag of freedom. But America, freed though 
she had become from political interference on 
the part of Britain, nevertheless inherited Negro 
slavery ; and the economic prosperity of at 
least one-half of the country was founded on 
the most hideous bondage in world history. 
Those who had fled Europe to escape tyrants had 
themselves, under force of circumstances, become 
tyrants. 

Not that any one willed slavery in America 
or designed to have it. It was an economic 
accident. It was in America before most of the 
Americans. The first Negro slaves were brought 
up the James River in Virginia before the May- 
flower arrived, and as Negro orators say to-day, 
" If being a long while in this country makes a 
good American we are the best Americans that 
there are." Slavery had grown to vast propor- 
tions by the time of the war against Britain. 
New America in 1783, standing on the threshold 
of the modern era, inherited a most terrible 
burden in her millions of slaves. It was a burden , 
that was growing into the live flesh of America, 
and no one dared face at that time the problem I 
of getting free of it. 

The actual American people as a whole were | 



I THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 3 

little responsible for the institution of slavery. 
The pioneers hated and feared it. The planters 
always condemned it in theory, and after the 
Emancipation of 1863 no one of any sense in 
the South has ever wished it back. Even in 
those States where slavery took deepest root and 
showed its worst characteristics there was through- 
out the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a 
persistent resistance on the part of the colonists 
against having black servile labour introduced. 

To cite one colony as in a way characteristic of 
the whole attitude of the colonists towards slavery 
Georgia might be taken. Georgia was originally 
an asylum for the bad boys of too respectable 
British families and for discharged convicts and 
hopeless drunkards. Royal Charter guaranteed 
freedom of religion (except to Papists) ; an 
embargo was placed on West Indian trade so as 
to stop the inflow of rum ; and Negro slavery 
was forbidden. All for the good of reprobates 
making a fresh start ! 

Invalids and merchants settled on the coast 
and made the society of Savannah. The bad 
boys proved to be too poor stuff with which to 
found a colony, and a special body of a hundred 
and thirty frugal and industrious Scots and a 
hundred and seventy carefully chosen Germans 
were brought in. Real work in Georgia com- 
menced at Ebenezer on the Savannah River and 
at New Inverness. The merchants strove to get 
slavery introduced ; the Scots and the Germans 
strove to keep it out. At Savannah every night 
polite society toasted " The One Thing Needful " 



4 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES i 

— Slavery. The common talk of the townsfolk 
was of the extra prosperity that would come to 
Georgia if slaves were brought in, the extra 
quantities of cotton, of rice, of timber, and all 
that middlemen could re-sell. The ministers of 
religion actually preached in churches in favour 
of an institution sanctioned by the Bible, and it 
was thought that a service was done for Christ by 
bringing the black men out of Africa where they 
were somewhat inaccessible, and throwing them 
into the bosom of the Christian family in America. 
But the Scots and the Germans remonstrated 
against the permission of an evil " shocking to 
human nature " and likely to prove in time not 
a blessing but a scourge. 

Over in South Carolina slavery was in full 
possession, and the wealth of the Carolinian 
merchants was a soreness to the lean traders of 
Georgia. Cupidity prompted underhand means 
to achieve the desired end. Slaves were imported 
on life-lease from owners in South Carolina. One 
could not purchase the freehold of a Negro's 
liberty and energy, only a ninety-nine years' 
lease of it as it were, but that sufficed. Freedom 
fell, the Charter was abrogated, and under the 
sway of a royal Governor the flood-gates of slavery 
were opened wide. In due time Georgia became 
one of the worst slave States of the South. It 
remains to this day one of those where in any case 
the contemporary record of burning and lynching 
is most lurid. It would not be unsafe to draw 
the conclusion that the introduction of slavery 
did as much harm to tlie souls of the original 



I THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 5 

Germans, Scots, and English, and their descend- 
ants, as to the Negroes themselves. 

The settlers were, however, loth to employ 
slaves, and for some years there was little change. 
It was the rich immigrants from South Carolina 
and elsewhere who embarked on large enter- 
prises of planting with a labour basis of black 
slaves. The poor white labouring class was 
gradually ruined by competition with slave 
labour. And then it became generally under- 
stood that every one had to employ slaves and it 
was unbecoming for a white man to toil with his 
hands. The poor whites were if anything more 
despised than the black slaves, and often indeed 
actually despised, paradoxically enough, by the 
latter. In some parts there sprang up bands of 
white gipsies and robbers called " pinelanders " 
who stole from black and white alike, and lived 
by their wits. 

In Africa the Negro tribes strove with one 
another in savagery, and sold their prisoners to 
the Negro traders or white agents who dragged 
them to the coast. There they were herded in 
the holds of noisome slaving vessels, indiscrimi- 
nately, nakedly, fortuitously, the violent ones 
tied up or chained, the gentler ones unloosed. 
None knew whither they were going, and even 
those victorious tribes who sold them to the white 
man knew nothing of the destination of the 
victims tliey thus despatched. Hundreds of 
thousands, nay, millions of tribesmen of all kinds 
and shades of black and brown were thus exported 
to the Indies and the Colonies and sold into 



CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES 



bondage to the civilised world. Arrived in 
America the slaves were sold to merchants or 
auctioned as common cattle and sent up-country 
to work. A healthy male slave of good dimen- 
sions and in his prime would fetch a thousand 
dollars, and young women eight hundred dollars, 
and fair-sized girls five hundred. Olmsted gives 
a price-list which was handed him by a dealer ; 
that was in 1853.^ ^^ earlier years the price 
was considerably less, and always varied accord- 
ing to the demand. The raw, first-come Negro 
slaves were not sold as retinue for the rich, but 
as colonial utiUties to be worked like cattle on 
the farms and plantations. Cotton was the staple, 
and in thinking of the time the eye must range 
over a vast expanse of cotton plantations and see 
all the main work done by Negro gangs of men 
and women in charge of slave-drivers. As 
Olmsted describes a gang of women in a char- 
acteristic passage : '' The overseer rode about 
them, on a horse, carrying in his hand a raw- 
hide whip . . . but as often as he visited one 
end of the line the hands at the other end would 
discontinue their labour until he turned to them 
again. Clumsy, awkward, gross, elephantine in 
all their movements ; pouting, grinning, and 
leering at us ; sly, sensual, and shameless in all 



^ Best men, 18-25 
Fair „ 
Boys 

Young women 
Girls, 5 ft. 
„ 4 ft. 9 in. 
4 ft. 



1 200- 1 300 dollars. 
950-1050 

375-950 
800-1000 

750-850 

700-750 

350-450 



(^ Journey through the Seaboard Slave States, by F. L. Olmsted.) 



1 THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 7 

their expression and demeanour ; I never before 
had witnessed, I thought, anything more revolt- 
ing. ..." In 1837 the whole of Georgia and 
indeed of the South was worked by black slaves — 
the poor white labour (chiefly Irish) had dimin- 
ished almost to disappearance. Slave labour was 
founded on slave discipline, and the discipline 
on punishment. There was no particular readi- 
ness on the part of the savages to do the work 
given them or understand what they had to do. 
Whether they could have been coaxed or per- 
suaded is problematical. Farmers have not the 
time or the spirit for coaxing. The quickest 
way was by inspiring terror or inflicting pain. 
It might have been different if the Negro could 
have been given any positive incentive to work, 
but there was none. He had therefore to be 
flogged to it. The smallest gang had its driver 
with his whip. The type who to-day has become 
politely a " speeder-up " was then the man with 
the whip. He could have had more power by 
using his whip infrequently and on the most 
stubborn slaves, but that was not the common 
man's way. He flogged hard and he flogged 
often. On a typical Georgian plantation the 
field driver had power to inflict twelve lashes 
there and then when trouble occurred. The 
head driver could give thirty-six and the over- 
seer fifty. Every morning there would be a 
dozen or so special floggings by the overseer or 
his assistant at the ofhce. Women, if anything, 
fared worse than men. On the slightest provo- 
cation their scanty clothes were thrown over 



8 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES i 

their heads and they were subjected to a beating. 
Naked boys and girls were tied by their wrists 
to boughs of trees so that their toes barely touched 
the ground, and lashed. The overseer did it, 
the owner's son did it, upon occasion the owner 
himself did it. 

There were pleasant exceptional homes in 
Virginia and the Carolinas and elsewhere where 
there was no flogging and no cruelty whatsoever, 
but instead a great mutual affection. Slavery 
may have been wrong there also, or it may have 
been justifiable. But it was not on account of 
the happy slaves that John Brown sallied forth 
at Harper's Ferry, but because of the many un- 
happy ones. As the whole intensity of the Negro 
trouble is centred in the evils of the institution 
of slavery, it is necessarily on these that one must 
insist, though the exceptions be not lost sight of. 

It is often said that the slaves were seldom 
hurt because since they were property it behoved 
a master to take care of them and preserve them. 
But that is fallacious. Men got pleasure out of 
beating their slaves as they get pleasure out of 
chewing tobacco, drinking spirits, and using bad 
language. It grew on them ; they liked it 
more and more. In many cases no proficiency 
or industry could save the slaves from flogging. 
And besides that, there was current in Georgia 
and all the more commercial parts a theory that 
it was most profitable to use up your slaves every 
seven years and then restock. 

Slaves, of course, were bred, and it is con- 
ceivable that it might have been generally more 



1 THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 9 

profitable to have a breeding farm of Negroes 
and sell the children than work them off in seven 
years. But there was little method in the minds 
of the planters. They tried to combine the 
seven years' system and breeding at the same time. 
Every girl of sixteen had children, every woman 
of thirty had grandchildren. But the women 
were worked up to the last moment of pregnancy 
on the cotton fields and sent back three weeks 
after delivery and even flogged then. The poor 
women lay on straw on earthen floors in their 
torments, moaning in their agonies. When sent 
back to the fields too soon they suffered horrible 
physical torment. They often appealed to their 
masters, " Me make plenty nigger for Massa, 
me useful nigger," but more than half of their 
offspring were allowed to die. The mother 
would have been worth her keep as a mother, 
but no, she must fill her place in the hoeing line 
instead of looking after her children. 

There were few genuine Negro families. 
All were herded or separated and sold off in 
batches and re-herded with little or no regard 
to family relationships, though these poor dark- 
minded slaves did form the most intimate and 
precious attachments. The slaves' fervent hope 
was that Massa would marry and have children, so 
that when he died they would not be sold up 
but remain in the family. 

Illegitimacy in sexual relationships raged. 
Almost every planter had, besides his own family, 
a dusky brood by coloured women. No likely 
girl escaped the overseers. Poor whites and 



10 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES i 

pinelanders broke into black quarters and ravished 
where they would. There seemed little squeam- 
ishness, and there was little enough effective 
resistance on the part of black girls. The in- 
stitution of slavery with its cruelties had brutal- 
ised men's minds. As for the Negro women, 
one can well understand how little feminine shame 
would remain when the bare hips were so 
commonly exposed and flogged. 

" Oh ! but don't you know — did nobody ever 
tell or teach any of you that it is a sin to live 
with men who are not your husbands ? " asked 
Fanny Kemble of a slave. The latter seized her 
vehemently by the wrist and exclaimed : 

" Oh yes, missis, we know — we know all 
about dat well enough ; but we do anything to 
get our poor flesh some rest from the whip ; 
when he make me follow him into de bush, what 
use me tell him no ? He have strength to make 
me." 1 

Probably the slave-drivers and other white 
men obtained some sensual gratification from 
flogging women. Brutality of this kind is often 
associated with sexual perversity. The taking 
of Negro women showed a will toward the animal 
and was an act of greater depravity than ordinary 
deflections from the straight and moral way. 
Not that there was not pride in pale babies and 
even a readiness on the part of some negresses to 
give themselves to white men. As a plantation 
song said, " Twenty-four black girls can't make 
one mulatto baby by themselves." 

1 Tivo Tears on a Georgian Plantation, by Frances Kemble. 



I THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY ii 

By flogging and rape and inhuman callousness 
did the white South express its reaction to black 
slavery. There were also burnings, demoniacal 
tortures, flogging to death, and every imaginable 
human horror. It may well be asked — How 
came it about that those who protested so high- 
mindedly about the introduction of slavery did not 
use the slaves kindly and humanly when they were 
forced to have them ? 

The answer I think lies in the fact that no 
man is good enough to have complete control 
over any other man. No man can be trusted. 
Give your best friend or neighbour power over 
you and you'll be surprised at the use he will 
make of it. Even wives and children in this 
respect are not safe in the hands of their husbands 
and parents if they are understood as possessions. 
" She belongs to me and I'll kill her," Gorky 
makes a drunken cobbler say. " Ah no, she does 
not belong to you, she is a woman, and a woman 
belongs to God," says the Russian friend. 

There is indeed little more terrifying in human 
experience than the situation which occurs when 
one human being is entirely in the power of 
another, when the prisoner in the dungeon 
confronts his torturer, when the unprotected 
girl falls completely into the power of a man, 
when Shylock has Antonio delivered to him, 
and so forth. 

Cruelty can be awakened in almost any man 
and woman — it can be developed. A taste for 
cruelty is like a taste for drink or sexual desire 
or drugs. It is a lust. It is indeed one of the 



12 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES i 

worst of the lusts. One can forgive or excuse 
a man the other lusts, but cruelty one cannot — 
and indeed does not wish to forgive or excuse. 
Yet how readily does it develop. 

The incredible story is told of a young girl 
lashed by the overseer, threatened with burning. 
She runs away. It is a gala day on the planta- 
tion. The white men hunt her to the swamps 
with bloodhounds and she is torn to bits before 
their eyes. They love the spectacle of terror 
even more than the spectacle of pain. The 
Negro of nervous excitable nature is marked out 
by destiny to be a butt for cruelty. It is so 
to-day long after emancipation : the Negro in 
whom hysterical fear can be awakened is the most 
likely to be lynched or chased by the mob or 
slowly burned for its delight. More terrible 
than the act of cruelty is the state of mind of 
those who can look on at it and gloat over it. 
After all a lynching is often roughly excusable. 
A man commits a heinous crime against a woman, 
scandalising the community, and the community 
takes the law into its own hands. The rightness 
of the action can be argued. But what of the 
state of heart of a mob of a thousand, watching 
a Negro burning to death, listening happily to 
his yells and crying out to " make him die slow " .'' 
It is an appalling revelation of the devil in man. 

And despite the fact that such cruelty agonises 
the mind of the tender-hearted and sympathetic 
we must remain tolerant in judgment. We must 
not tolerate intolerance ; in all other respects we 
must be tolerant. 



I THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 13 

Cruelty is in man. The planters did the 
natural thing with the slaves who came into their 
power. The white South would slip into the 
same way of life again to-day if slavery could 
be introduced. What is more, you and I, and 
every man, unless he were of an exceptional 
nature, would succumb to the system and dis- 
grace ourselves with similar cruelty. A demon 
not altogether banished still lurks in most of 
us and can easily be brought back. Lust lives 
on lust and grows stronger ; and cruelty, like 
other cravings, is a desire of the flesh and 
can easily become devouring habit. We are 
greater brutes after we have committed an act 
of cruelty or lust than we were before we com- 
mitted it, and we are made ready to commit 
more or worse. 

Concomitant with cruelty is callousness. An 
indifference which is less than usual human 
carelessness sets in with regard to creatures on 
whom we have satisfied our lusts. Flogging 
makes a heavy flogged type of human being 
who looks as if he had always needed flogging. 
It ceases to be piquant to flog him. The old 
Negress with brutish human lusts written all over 
her body is not even horrible or repulsive, elle 
nexlste plus. The old worn-out drudge lies 
down to die in the dirty straw, the flies gather- 
ing about his mouth, and expires without one 
Christian solace or one Christian sympathy. 
Though ministers waxed eloquent on the 
Christian advantages to the Blacks of being 
brought from pagan Africa to Christian America, 



14 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES i 

there quickly sets in the belief that after all 
Negroes are like animals and have no souls to 
save. 

This callousness showed worst in the selling of 
slaves, the separating of black husband and wife, 
parents and children, family and family, with the 
indifference with which a herdsman separates and 
detaches sheep from his flock. This, despite the 
manifest passionate tenderness and attachment of 
slave to slave, and even upon occasion slave to 
master and home. 

The state of the slaves grew most forlorn, 
forsaken of man, unknown to God. A prison 
twilight eclipsed the light of the sun-flooded 
Southland. A consciousness of a sad sad fate 
was begotten among the slaves. All the tribes 
of the Negroes became one in a community of 
suffering. And gradually they ceased to be 
mere savages. They grew to something higher — 
through suffering. It was a penal offence for 
many a long year even to preach Christ to them. 
Slaves were beaten when it was found out that 
they had been baptized. But before the Blacks 
were brought to Christ they must have got a 
great deal nearer Him than had their masters. 
It was illegal to teach a slave to read and write. 
But the Negroes in a mysterious way learned the 
white man's code and secretly obtained his Bible 
and plunged into the Old Testament and the 
New. The white man rightly feared that the 
spread of education among the slaves would 
endanger the institution. They spoke of slavery 
as the institution as if it were the only one in the 



I THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 15 

world. They also feared the spread of Christian 
teaching. 

As it happened, the Negro soul was very 
thirsty for religion and drank very deeply of the 
wells of God. The Negroes learned to sing to- 
gether, thus first of all expressing corporate life. 
They drew from the story of Israel's sufferings 
a token of their own life, and they formed their 
scarcely articulate hymns — which survive to-day 
as the only folk-lore music of America. 

Go down, Moses, 

Way down in Egyp' Ian' 
Tell ole Pharaoh 
Le'ma people go ! 

Israel was in Egyp' Ian' 

Oppres' so hard dey could not Stan', 
Le'ma people go ! 

Or the infinitely pathetic and beautiful 

In the vallev 
On my knees 
With my burden 
An' my Saviour. 

I couldn't hear nobody pray, O Lord, 

Couldn't hear nobody pray, 

O — way down yonder 
By myself 

I couldn't hear nobody pray. 

Chilly waters 
In the Jordan 
Crossing over 
Into Canaan. 

I couldn't hear nobody pray, O Lord, 

Couldn't hear nobody pray, 

O — way down yonder 
By myself 

I couldn't hear nobody pray. 



i6 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES i 

Hallelujah ! 
Troubles over, 
In the Kingdom 
With my Jesus. 

I couldn't hear nobody pray, O Lord, 

Couldn't hear nobody pray, 

O — way down yonder 
By myself 

I couldn't hear nobody pray. 

The poor slave was very much — way down yonder 
by himself, and he couldn't hear nobody pray. 
Jesus seemed to have been specially born for him 
— to love his soul when none other was ready 
to love it, to comfort him in all his sufferings, 
and to promise him that happy heaven where 
unabashed the old woolly-head can sit by Mary 
and " play with the darling Son," as another 
" spiritual " expresses it. 

The first Negro preachers and evangelists 
had the inevitable persecution, and as inevitably 
the persecution failed. The North grew very 
sympathetic, and Bibles grew as plentiful in the 
South as dandelion blossoms. It became the 
unique lesson-book of the Negro. It alone fed 
his spiritual consciousness. He obtained at once 
an appreciation of its worth to him that made it 
his greatest treasure, his only offset against his 
bondage. He learned it by heart, and there came 
to be a greater textual knowledge of the Bible 
among the Black masses than among any other 
people in the world. It is so to-day, though 
it is fading. The spiritual life of the Negro 
became as it were an answering beacon to the 
fervour of the Abolitionists of the North, most 



I THOUGHTS ON SLAVERY 17 

of whom were passionate Christians of Puritan 
type. 

The South grew sulky, grew infinitely sus- 
picious and restive and irritated and fearful. 
It began to fear a general slaves' rising. The 
numerical superiority of the Negroes presented 
itself to the mind as an ever-growing menace. 
The idea of emancipation was fraught with the 
economic ruin it implied. It is difficult now to 
resurrect the mind of society preceding the time 
of the great Civil War. It is the fashion to 
emphasise the technical aspect of the quarrel of 
North and South, and to say that the war was 
fought in order that the Union might be pre- 
served. But it is truer to say that it was fought 
because the South wanted to secede. And the 
South wished to secede because it saw more 
clearly every day that the institution of slavery 
was in danger. Every month, every year, saw 
its special occasions of irritation, premonitory 
splashing out of flame, petty explosions and 
threats. More slaves escaped every year. The 
Underground Railway, so called, by which the 
Friends succoured the poor runaways and brought 
them out of danger and distress into the sanctuary 
of the North, grew to be better and better 
organised. On the other hand, the punishments 
of discovered runaways grew more barbarous and 
more public, and the rage of the Nordi was 
inflamed. 

Heroic John Brown made his abortive bid to 
light up a slaves' insurrection by his wild exploit 
of Harper's Ferry. And then John Brown, old 

c 



1 8 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES i 

man as he was, of apostolic aspect and fervour, 
was tried and condemned. He did not fear to 
die. But he wrote to his children that they 
should " abhor with undying hatred that sum of 
all villainies, slavery," and whilst he was being 
led to the gallows he handed to a bystander his 
last words and testament : 

I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes 
of this guilty land will never be purged away but with 
Blood. I had as I now think vainly flattered myself 
that without very much bloodshed it might be done . . . 

and in his ill-fitting suit and trousers and loose 
carpet slippers John Brown was hanged silently 
and solemnly, and all the troops watching him, 
even stern Stonewall Jackson himself, were stricken 
with a sort of premonitory terror. Soon came 
the great war. 

And the slaves were made free. That is 
their story. Where do they stand to-day t 



II 

IN VIRGINIA 

By the abolition of slavery mankind threw off a 
"great evil. The slave-owner escaped as well as 
5ie slave. For although our human sympathy- 
goes more readily to the slaves themselves, it is 
nevertheless true that it was as bad for the spirit 
and character of the owners as for those of their 
chattels. To-day in America, and especially in 
the South, there is a hereditary taint in the mind 
derived from slavery, and it is to be observed in the 
descendants of the masters as much as in the 
descendants of the slaves. It would be a mistake 
to think of this American problem as exclusively 
a Negro problem. It is as necessary to study 
the white people as the black. The children 
of the owners and the overseers and the slave- 
drivers are not the same as the children of families 
where no slaves were ever owned. Mastery of 
men, and power over men, have been bred in 
their blood. That in part explains the char- 
acter of that section of the United States where 
slaves were most owned, and the brutality, 
cruelty, and sensuality which upon occasion 
disfigure tlie face of society in 1920. The old 

19 



20 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

dead self leers out with strange visage from the 
new self which wishes to be different. 

If you see a white man in New Orleans rolling 
his quid and spitting out foul brutality against 
" niggers," you will often find that his father 
was a driver on a plantation. Or if in that abnor- 
mal way so characteristic of the South you hear 
foul sexual talk about the Negroes rolling forth 
from a low-brow in Vicksburg, it is fairly likely 
that he is full of strange black lust himself, and 
that his father and grandfather perchance assaulted 
promiscuously Negro women and contributed to 
the writing of racial shame in the vast bastardy of 
the South. If you hear a man urging that the 
Negro is not a human being but an animal, you 
will often find that he himself is nearer to the 
animal. His fathers before him held that the 
Negroes were animals and not humans. And 
believing them animals they yet sinned with the 
animals and so brought themselves down to 
animal level. You see a crowd of white men near 
Savannah. They are mostly proud of English 
origin. Yet they are going to burn a Negro 
alive for killing a sheriff. How is it possible in 
this century ! It is possible because it is in the 
blood of the children. They crave to see Uncle 
Tom's flesh crackling in the flames and hear 
his hysterical howls. Their fathers did. Their 
children's children will do the same unless it is 
stamped out by the will of society as a whole. 

Of course the inheritance of evil is not the 
same in all classes of society. Every one inherits 
something from the baleful institution, but not 



II 



IN VIRGINIA 21 



every one the same. The mind of the coarse 
White is crude and terrible, and the mind of the 
refined is certainly different. One should perhaps 
be more lenient to the poor, and more urgent in 
criticism of the rich. For all stand together, and 
the disease is one not merely of individuals but 
of the whole. The rich and cultured condone the 
brutality of the masses because they have a point 
of view which is not incompatible with theirs. 
Those whose ancestors treated the slaves well 
j claim to be immune from all criticism. There 
I were in the old days many kind and considerate 
masters to whom the Negroes were wonderfully 
attached. But even these masters suffered from 
the institution of slavery, as any rich man suffers 
from dependence on retainers and flunkeys and 
servants whom he practically owns, as all suffer 
who are divorced from the reality of earning 
their living as equals with their neighbours. And 
their children, brought up amidst the submissive 
servility of the Negroes, grew to be little monarchs 
or chiefs, and always to expect other people to do 
things for them. Where ordinary white children 
learn to ask and say " please," they learned to 
order and command and to threaten with punish- 
ment. The firm lip of the educated Southerner 
has an expression which is entirely military. 
In the army, one asks for nothing of inferiors 
except courage on the day of battle. All is 
ordered. And the power to order and to be 
obeyed rapidly changes the expression of the 
features. It has changed the physiognomy of 
the aristocracy in the Southern section of the 



22 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

United States. You can classify all faces into 
those who say " please " and those who do not, 
and the children of the slave-owners are mostly 
in the second category. Unqualified mastership ; 
indifference to dirt and misery in the servant 
class ; callous disregard of others' pain, or pleasure 
taken in their pain ; slaves said to be animals and 
not human beings, and the superadded sin of 
bestiality, using a lower caste to satiate coarse 
lusts which the upper caste could not satisfy ; 
the buying and selling of creatures who could 
otherwise only belong to God, — all these terrible 
sins or sinful conditions are visited on the third 
and fourth generation of those who hate, though, 
as must always be said, God's mercy is shown to 
thousands of them that love Him and keep His 
eternal commandments. 

The children of the slaves also inherit evil from 
their slavery. The worst of these are resentment 
and a desire for revenge. Doubtless slavery 
sensualised the Negro. He was the passive 
receptacle for the white man's lusts. Most of the 
Negroes arrived in America more morally pure 
than they are to-day. As savages they were 
nearer to Nature. Mentally and spiritually they 
are much higher now, but they have learned 
more about sin, and sin is written in most of their 
bodies. It is sharpest in the mulattos and " near 
whites " — those whose ancestors were longest in 
slavery have the worst marks of it in them. The 
state of the last slaves to be imported into America 
is much simpler and happier than the rest. The 
moral character of the black Negroes is also 



II IN VIRGINIA 23 

simpler than that of the pallid ones. But this 
is anticipating my story. I set off to study the 
ex-slave because the civilised world is threatened 
by what may be called a vast slaves' war. In 
Russia the grandchildren of the serfs have over- 
thrown those who were once tlieir masters, and 
have taken possession of the land and the State ; 
in Germany Spartacus has arisen to overthrow the 
military slavery of Prussianism ; and the wage- 
slaves are rising in every land. There is a vast 
resentment of lower orders against upper orders, 
of the proletarians who have nothing and are 
nothing against those who through inheritance or 
achievement have reached the ruling class. The 
Negroes are in no way to be compared to the 
Russians in intellectual or spiritual capacity : 
they are racially so much more undeveloped. 
Much less divided Russian serf from Russian 
master than slave from planter. But it is just 
because the contrast between the American white 
man and American black man is so sharp and the 
quarrel so elemental in character that it has 
seemed worth while to explore the American 
situation. And if the struggle is more elemental 
it can hardly be said that there is not more at 
stake. American industrialism is ravaged by 
waves of violent revolutionary ferment. If ill- 
treatment of the Blacks should at last force the 
twelve millions of them to make common cause 
with a revolutionary mob, polite America might 
be overwhelmed and the larger portion of the 
world be lost — if not of the world, at least of that 
world we call civilisation. 



24 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

What then of the Negro ? What is he doing, 
what does he look Hke, what does he feel to-day ? 
It is impossible to learn much from current books, 
so, following the dictum, " What is remarkable, 
learn to look at it with your own eyes," I went to 
America to see. 

I chose Olmsted as my model. In 1853 
Olmsted made a famous journey through the sea- 
board States, holding up his mirror to the life 
of the South in slavery days. The book which 
records his impressions and reflections is one of 
the most valuable in American literature. This 
great student of Nature went methodically 
through Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, 
Alabama and Louisiana. A pilgrimage not un- 
like his has to be repeated to-day to ascertain 
how the ex-slave is, what he is doing, how the 
experiment of his liberation has prospered, and 
what is his future in the American Commonwealth. 
But as America is so much more developed in 
1920, and more problematical in the varied fields 
of her national life, it has been necessary to make 
a broader, if more rapid, survey of the whole 
South. I made the following journey in America : 
I went slowly south from New York to Trenton, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, stay- 
ing some days at each and seeing America grow 
darker as it visibly does when you watch faces 
from trolley-car windows going from town to 
town southward. I was on South Street in 
Philadelphia ; I watched the well-paid artisans 
and labourers at the docks of Baltimore, visited 
there the polite homes of the coloured working- 



II IN VIRGINIA 25 

class, cleaner, richer, cosier than that of the 
average British workman on Tyneside or London 
Docks. I climbed the Lincoln Heights to talk 
to Nanny Burroughs and see her good training- 
college for coloured women there ; was at 
Howard University and talked with black and 
gentle Professor Miller and with the pale and 
intellectual Emmett Scott. I sailed down the 
Potomac to Norfolk, Virginia, Uncle Sam's great 
naval base, going to be the greatest of its kind 
in the world ; crossed to Newport News and 
talked with black riveters and chippers and others 
in the shipbuilding yards ; then, following the 
way of the first English colonists and also the 
first Negro slaves, went up the James River to 
Jamestown, and on to Richmond, the fine capital 
of the Old Dominion. I travelled to Lynch- 
burg and its tobacco industries, went from thence 
to " sober " Knoxville, investigating the race- 
riot there, and the attitude of Tennessee. From 
Knoxville I went to Chattanooga and Birming- 
ham, in each of which great steel centres I met 
the leading Negroes and investigated conditions. 
I was at Atlanta, and walked across Georgia to the 
Sea, following Sherman. A three-hundred-mile 
walk through the cotton-fields and forests of 
Georgia was necessary in order to get a broad 
section of the mass of the people. The impres- 
sion left behind by Sherman's army which laid 
waste the country and freed all the Negroes there 
gave also something of the historical atmosphere 
of the South. From Savannah, which was the 
point on the sea to which General Sherman 



26 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

attained, I went to New Brunswick and Jackson- 
ville, thence to Pensacola, and on from Florida to 
New Orleans and the Gulf plantations. I jour- 
neyed up the Mississippi on a river steamer, 
stayed at the Negro city of Mound Bayou, was 
at Vicksburg and Greenville and Memphis, and 
then repaired once more to the contrasting 
North. 



Crossing the Mason-Dixon line was rather a 
magical and wonderful event for me. After 
all, the North, with its mighty cities and 
industrialised populations, is merely prose to 
one who comes from England. Pennsylvania 
is a projection of Lancashire and Yorkshire, 
New York is a projection of London, and massive 
Washington has something of the oppressiveness 
of English park drives and Wellingtonias. But 
Southward one divines another and a better 
country. It has a glamour ; it lures. There 
the orange grows and there are palms ; there 
are a hotter sun and brighter flowers. Human 
beings there, one surmises, have a more romantic 
disposition and warmer imagination. Reposing 
on the vast feudalism of Negro labour there is a 
more stately way of living, life is more spacious. 
And at the resorts on the coast of Florida and the 
Gulf of Mexico a great number of people live for 
pleasure and happiness and not for business and 
ambition. 

I journeyed on a white-painted steamer in 
the evening down the Potomac to Old Point 



II IN VIRGINIA 27 

Comfort, leaving behind me the noise and glare of 
Washington and the hustle of Northern American 
civilisation. It was the crossing of a frontier — 
without show of passports or examination of 
trunks — the passing to a new country, with a 
different language and different ways. The 
utter silence of the river was a great contrast to 
the clangour of the streets of Philadelphia and 
Baltimore and the string of towns I had been 
passing through on my way South. Sunset was 
reflected deep in the stream, and mists crept over 
the surface of the water. Then the moon silvered 
down on our course ; my cabin-window was full 
open and the moon looked in. I lay in a 
capacious sort of cottage bed and was enchanted 
by the idea of going to " Dixie," of which we had 
all sung so much ; and the soft southern airs and 
night and the throbbing of the river-steamer 
gliding over the placid water gave an assurance 
of some new refreshment of spirit. With a 
quaint irrelevance the whole British army, and 
indeed the nation, had been singing " Dixie " 
songs throughout the war — *'Just try to picture 
me, Way down in Tennessee " we were always 
asking of one another. Now behold, the war was 
over, and it might be possible to go there and 
forget a Uttle about all that sordid and tumultuous 
European quarrel. 

All night the river whispered its name and 
lulled the boat to sleep. Dawn on the broad 
serenity of the waters at Old Point Comfort was 
utterly unlike the North from which I had come 
and the last ten days of jangling trolley-cars 



28 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

hustling along shoppy streets. A morning star 
shone in the pale blue sky, lighting as it were a 
vestal lamp over the coast, and we looked upon 
Virginia. As the sun rose, vapour closed in the 
scene. We made the port of Norfolk in a mist 
which seemed each moment getting warmer. 
The chill winds of October were due in the North, 
but Virginia was immune. During the week I 
spent in the city of Norfolk and on Hampton 
Roads it did not get less than 85 in the shade, 
even at night. The weather, however, was hotter 
than is usual even in Eastern Virginia at that 
time of the year. 

I obtained the impression of a great city 
rather cramped for want of space, and in this I 
suppose I was right. By all accounts Norfolk 
has trebled its population during the war, and 
needs to have its centre rebuilt spaciously and 
worthily. When Olmsted came through in 1853 
he records that Norfolk was a dirty, low, ill- 
arranged town, having no Lyceum or public 
library, no gardens, no Art galleries, and though 
possessing two " Bethels " having no " Seamen's 
Home " and no place of healthy amusement. He 
rather makes fun of a Lieutenant Maury who in 
those days was having a vision of the Norfolk of 
the future, and saw it one of the greatest ports in 
the world, being midmost point of the Atlantic 
coast and having an inner and an outer harbour 
with perfect facilities of ingress and egress in all 
weathers. 

To-day Lieutenant Maury's vision has proved 
prophetic. In the maps of the new America 



II IN VIRGINIA 29 

which is coming, Norfolk is destined to be printed 
in ever larger letters. The war showed the way. 
The determination of America to be worthily- 
armed at sea made it certain, and the future of 
Norfolk, with Hampton Roads and Newport 
News, is to be the primary naval base of the 
Atlantic coast. The military and naval activities 
of Norfolk during the war were very important. 
Eastern Virginia was a great training ground, 
and Norfolk the main port of embarkation 
of troops for Europe. Shipbuilding and naval 
construction also were in full swing. Great 
numbers of labourers, especially Negroes, seem 
to have been attracted. The number no doubt 
is exaggerated, but the coloured people there 
number themselves now at one hundred thousand. 
They have been attracted by the high wages and 
the record of Norfolk for immunity from mob 
violence. A lynching is not in any one's remem- 
brance. Trouble might have broken out during 
the war, but Norfolk possessed an excellent " City 
Manager " who was always prepared. 

On one occasion some five hundred sailors 
set out to " clean up coloured town," but they 
were met by an adequate force of armed police 
and marines and changed their minds. On the 
other hand, a mob of coloured crews and troops 
started an attack on the town gaol, but a few 
armed men quickly dispersed them. 

I noticed at once that the Blacks of Norfolk 
were very much more black than those of Washing- 
ton or New York. Their hair was more matted. 
Their eyes were more goggly. They were more 



30 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES n 

odorous. When the black chambermaid had 
been in my room for two minutes it was filled 
with a pungent and sickening odour. The 
elevator reeked with this odour. It was the 
characteristic smell of my first Southern hotel. 
I noticed it on the trolley-cars. It was wafted 
amongst the vegetables and fruit at the city 
market. Indeed, the whole town had it. I grew 
used to it after a while, and was told by those who 
were liberal of mind that every race had its smell. 
For instance, to certain tribes of Indians there 
was said to be nothing so disgusting as the smell 
of a perfectly clean white man. Even when a 
man who has a bath every day and a change into 
perfectly fresh linen came into his presence the 
Indian felt sick. Negroes were supposed to 
notice the smell of white men but were too 
subservient or polite to remark upon it. There 
is, however, a good deal of doubt about this point 
in human natural history. The smell that we 
have is the smell of the animal in us, and not of 
the more human or spiritual part of us. One 
knows the smell of the bear and the fox, and that 
the wolf has a stronger smell than the dog, and 
the wild cat than the domestic cat. Bloodhounds 
are said to follow the trail of the Negro more 
readily than that of the white man, and it might 
reasonably be argued that the terrible odour of 
the Blacks is due to their greater proximity to an 
animal stage in development. Be that as it may, 
I quite see that this odour is something which the 
Negro will have difficulty in living down. I 
learned that he was very sensitive about it, as 



II IN VIRGINIA 31 

about his kinky hair, and tliat the more educated 
and refined he became the more he strove to get 
rid of those marks. That explained to me why 
in all those happy streets of prosperous Baltimore 
at every corner there was a " Beauty Parlor " 
where specialists plied Madame Walker's " anti- 
kink," and why the prosperous Negro working- 
man demanded a bath-room and hot water in his 
home. The reason why the Blacks seem blacker 
in the South seems to be because they are segre- 
gated in " Jim Crow " sections of the cars, and 
none of the black comes off on white people, 
but is on the contrary intensified by the shadow 
of black looks. 

The coloured folk here, moreover, seemed to 
talk more in the way they are supposed to talk, 
and are not mincing the American tongue as 
in the North. Outside my room one maid says, 
*' You's a fool, sister Ann." " Yas, sister Sue, 
dat's 'zackly what I am," says the other, and 
laughs and repeats it as if it were the greatest 
joke — " dat's 'zackly what I am." 

I went into the streets to seek the Reverend 

B , a leading coloured preacher of Norfolk. 

I stood in wonderment before a white-washed 
chapel with large china-blue stained-glass win- 
dows luridly depicting our Lord's baptism and 
the opening of the heavens over the Jordan. A 
grizzled old Negro in a cotton shirt stopped in 
front of me and exclaimed insinuatingly, " You's 
looking at cullud folk's church ; an't it bew- 
tiful ? " I took the opportunity to ask for the 
Rev. B . He led me along and pointed 



32 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

up a flight of wooden steps to a sufficiently hand- 
some dwelling-place. 

Rev. B on seeing me had a gleam of doubt 

on his face for perhaps a second, but only for a 
second. One instinctively felt that here in Vir- 
ginia, where the colour line is sharply drawn, no 
white man is likely to present himself on terms 
of equality to a black man without the desire 
to patronise or some guile of some kind. It 
is rare for any white man to call upon any 
educated black man, and very rarely indeed 
that he comes to him in a straightforward, honest, 

and sincere manner. So the Rev. B showed 

doubt for a moment, and then suddenly after 
a few words his doubt vanished. In my subse- 
quent journeying and adventures it was always 
thus — doubt at first glance, and then rapidly 
the awakening of implicit trust and confidence. 
I personally found the Negroes nearly always 

friendly. Mr. B was a sparely - coloured, 

lean, intellectual young man, a capable white 
man in a veil of dark skin. He was all but 
white. I looked at his webby hands — what a 
pity it seemed that being so near he could not 
be altogether. And yet I realised that in such 
men and women, no matter how fair they be, 
the Psyche is different. There is sometliing 
intensely and insolubly Negro in even the nearest 
of near-whites. 

Rev. B took me all over the city. He 

was evidently extremely well known to the 
coloured people, for our conversation was- inter- 
twined with a ceaseless — 



II IN VIRGINIA 



33 



" How do, Revrun' ? " 

" How do ? " 

He showed me his charmingly-built church 
(not tliat with the china -blue windows) con- 
trived in graceful horse-shoe style with graduated 
sloping gallery, richly-stained windows, and a 
vast array of red -cushioned seats. A black 
organist was discoursing upon the organ, and a 
voluminous dusky charwoman with large arms 
was cleaning and dusting among the pews 
below. 

There sat under Rev. B every Sunday a 

fair share of the quality coloured folk of Norfolk. 
*' I am glad that you have come to me, because 
I can show you an up-to-date and proper church," 
said the pastor. " There are nine or ten like 
this in Norfolk, but when a stranger asks to see 
a Negro church he's usually taken to some out- 
of-the-way tabernacle of the Holy Folks or some 
queer sect where every one is shouting Halle- 
lujah, and it all seems very funny. But if you'll 
come to me on Sunday morning you'll hear a 
service which for dignity and spiritual comeliness 
will compare with any white man's service in 
any part of the world. You mustn't think of us 
as still cotton-pickers and minstrels and nothing 
more. There is a great deal of Negro wealth 
and refinement in this city of Norfolk." 

" How do you get on with white ministers .'' " 
I asked. " Do you work together ? " 

" Oh, white ministers do not recognise black 
ones on the street," said he. " My neighbour, 
for instance, knows me well enough at the 

D 



34 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

Baptist Conference, and by his talk I see he knows 
all about my church. But here in the city he 
cannot afford to know me. Yet he has not half 
so many worshippers at his church, nor do they 
pay him half the salary which my people pay me. 
He dare not spend on his clothes what I spend ; 
he has not such a well-appointed home. Yet if 
we meet on the street — he doesn't know me." 

This was evidently a sore point. 

We went to Brown's Bank. Brown has gone 
to Philadelphia to start a second Negro bank. 
The first one has been in existence ten years. 
Brown is a financier, and something more than 
that. For he encourages the Negro theatres and 
is greatly helping his people along their way.. 
We also visited the polite edifice of the Tidewater 
Bank and Trust Company which has been built 
since the Armistice. " It was contracted for by 
Negroes and built by Negroes alone," said the 
Treasurer proudly, a blunt, bullet-headed, whim- 
sical fellow, with an intense desire to push 
business and to hustle. All the clerks and steno- 
graphers were coloured. Each teller sat in his 
steel cage for which he alone held the key. All 
the latest banking machinery was in operation, 
including the coin separator and counter and 
wrapper, and the adding machine. I worked 
an imaginary account under coloured direction, 
using the adding machine, and gave assent to its 
infallibility. They showed me their strong-room, 
and I peeped at their cash reserves. The 
Treasurer and " Revrun' " then took me up into 
a high mountain, namely, the Board Room, 



11 IN VIRGINIA 



35 



which was in a gallery overlooking the whole of 
the working part of the bank. 

" My motto," said the Treasurer, " is ' Folks 
who only work for as long as they are paid will 
find they are only paid for what they have done.' 
We work here till we are through, be it eleven 
or twelve o'clock at night. The man who isn't 
hard is not for us." 

We talked about the Negro. 

" He must win freedom," said the banker. 
*' It is never a bequest, but a conquest. You 
can't have redemption without the shedding of 
the Precious Blood, can you. Reverend ? I am 
fighting for the Negro by succeeding in business. 
There's only one thing that can bring him respect, 
and that is achievement." 

These were his most impressive words. We 
walked out of the new bank. 

" He has his knock-about car and his limousine 
and a finely-appointed house and a governess 

for his children," said Rev. B as we footed 

it once more in the sun-bathed street. " But of 
course you can be a millionaire to-day and it 
won't help you to marry even the poorest white 
girl. Or you can be a Negro heiress, but no 
amount of wealth will induce a white man to 
marry a coloured girl. For the matter of that, 
though, there are Negroes so white you couldn't 
tell the difference, and we've got plenty to choose 
from if our tastes lie that way. If a Negro wants 
to marry a White he can find plenty within his 
own race." 

Rev. B was himself married to a woman 



36 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

who could pass as white in Southern Europe, 
and his children were Httle white darlings with 
curly hair. We hailed a heavy " F and D " car. 
I will not mention the actual name of the build. 
A young coloured dandy was sitting in it. " You 
see this car," said Reverend. " It belongs to 

Dr. R . It's an ' F and D.' In many places 

the agents will not sell this build of car to a Negro, 
even for cash down." 

" Why is that .? " 

'' W>11, it's a fine type of car, and rich white 
men in a city don't care to see a coloured man 
going about in one exactly the same. An agent 
would lose business if he sold them to Negroes. 
What's more, whether he lost business or not, 
he wouldn't do it. Here in Virginia, however, 
there is not so much prejudice, but when you go 
farther South you'll find it." 

We got into the car. The young dandy 
proved to be a doctor's assistant, a sort of 
apprentice to the great physician we were about 
to meet. He had graduated at Fisk, which he 
called the Negro Athens. He was dressed in a 
well-cut suit of grey, a rich necktie, and a felt 
hat which was in excellent taste. His complexion 
was of the cocoa-brown, highly-polished type, 
and his large eyes were quiet and reflective, as 
if unawakened to the joy of life. Politely chat- 
ting to us, he guided the handsome car along some 
of the most terribly rutty and broken streets. 

" We pay equal taxes," said he, " but because 
coloured people live in these streets the city 
won't repair the roads. They are all rich people 



II IN VIRGINIA 37 

living in these houses, all Negroes. Several of 
them own cars. . . . Now look on the other 
hand at this street. It's a White street, all 
smoothly repaired. What a beautiful surface ; 

see the difference ! " Rev. B urged this point 

also. It was a striking example of inequality, 
and one that makes a strong appeal to any one 
from England. 

Dr. R proved to be a rich practitioner, 

living in a delightful villa with polished floors 
and a French neatness and charm in the furniture 
and decorations. The sun-blinds were all down, 
and a pleasant creamy light was diffused upon 
his books and pictures and silk-upholstered divan. 
He was very busy, but said he could always spare 
a few moments from his profession if it were a 
question of helping his race, and he thought 
nothing could help the Negroes more than a 
dispassionate review of their situation by a 
white man who could bring it not merely before 
America but before the world. He had more 
patients than he could deal with, all Negroes, 
with the exception of a few Jews. The Jews have 
no prejudice, and are ready to be attended by a 
good doctor whatever the colour of his skin, 
which is a point in any case in favour of the Jews. 
For a long while the Negroes distrusted their 
own doctors, and thought that only a white man 
could possibly have the skill to treat them. But 
a later generation has discovered that their own 
folk have an excellent grasp of medicine. My 
further acquaintance with a considerable number 
of coloured doctors in the South has led me to 



38 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

the conclusion that their temperament suits them 
admirably. They make good doctors. What 
is more, they naturally understand the Negro's 
body and constitution and nervous system better 
than the white man, and the pathology of the 
Negro is very different from that of the white 
man. The white doctor as yet has not given 
much separate study to the Negro's body — 
though it is certainly very different from ours 
in many ways. He is inclined perhaps to be a 
little brutal and offhand with Negro patients — 
and they certainly are tiresome, with their 
superstitious fear of ill-health and evil-eyes and 
what not. This impatience has helped the 
coloured practitioner. Negroes, like other people, 
go where they are best treated, and the medical 
attendance upon a hundred thousand people 
could make many doctors rich. 

In the old slavery days the Negroes were just 
a broad base where all were equal. To-day the 
" race " has lifted up an inteUigent and profes- 
sional class. The working Negro population of 
Norfolk could lift up its intellectual apex of 
minister, doctor, and banker, and make them 
comparatively rich men, and give them all the 
show of luxury and culture which would have 
been the lot of white men in similar positions. 
So the broad base of slavery grows to be a pyramid 
of freedom. 

Dr. R was a shrewd, capable little human 

mountain. He said, " I think the time has come 
for the Negro to amass wealth ; it's the only 
thing that counts in America." He thought 



II IN VIRGINIA 39 

the League of Nations might help the Negro 
if its representatives ever met at Washington. 
There would be Frenchmen and Englishmen and 
Italians, and being so near to the South, it would 
be a shame to America if lynchings took place 
while they were sitting. As it was, the Negro 
South was a sort of skeleton cupboard which must 
not be exposed. 

From him I learned first that the Negro had 
not access to the Carnegie libraries in the South. 
I was surprised. Up at Baltimore in the North 
I was talking to a librarian, and he averred that 
the Negroes used the public library much more 
than white people, and that there were so many 
darkies that whites did not care to go. But I 
travel such a very short distance South and I 
find no Negro admitted at all. 

*' Surely that is contrary to the spirit of the 
Carnegie grants," said I. 

" Yes, for Carnegie was a good friend to the 

Negro. But so it is," said Dr. R . '' And 

I do not think Negroes should agitate about it. 
It would be better for Negroes to build dieir own 
libraries. We shall have to do so. But we don't 
want to intrude where we're not wanted." 

He told me what he considered the most 
thrilling moment of his life. He was out with 
a friend at midnight watching the posting of 
election results, when suddenly a *' lewd woman " 
came out of a house-door, screaming and waving 
her arms. She made right for them, and they 
were in terror lest she should fall down at their 
feet or start reviling them. Fortunately they had 



40 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

the presence of mind not to run away from her, j 
or they might have been lynched by the crowd. 

The worthy doctor took us out and drove us 
all over the city, heartily apologising that he 
could not ask me to have any meal with his 
wife and himself. *' For although you may have 
no prejudice — it would not be safe for either of 
us if it were known." Which was indeed so. 
Throughout the whole of the South it is impossible 
to eat or drink with a coloured man or woman. 

My chief way of finding people to whom I 
had introductions was by reference to the city 
directory. Here I found that all coloured people 
were marked with a star — as much as to say, 
" Watch out ; this party's coloured." White 
women were indicated as "Mrs." or "Miss," 
but coloured women always as plain " Sarah 
Jones " or " Betty Thompson " or whatever the 
name might be, without any prefix. This I 
discovered to be one of many small grievances of 
the Negro population, akin to that of not having 
their roads mended though they pay taxes, and 
being obliged to take back seats behind a straw 
screen in the trolley-cars. 



It was a novel impression in the Negro church 
on Sunday morning. I came rather early, and 
found an adult Bible -class discussing theology 
in groups. One man near me exclaimed, " It 
says ' He that believeth and is baptized shall be 
saved,' doesn't it, brother ? Well then, I believe, 
so why argufy ^ I a'nt a-going to take no chances. 



II IN VIRGINIA 41 

No, sir. I a'nt a-goin' to do it," — a serene black 
child of forty years or so. 

In the full congregation were all types of 
Negroes. The men were undistinguished, but 
the women were very striking. One lady wore 
a gilded skirt and a broad-brimmed black straw 
hat. Two Cleopatras sat in front of me, tall, 
elegant, graceful, expensively dressed as in May- 
fair, one in chiffon, the other in soft grey satin, 
tiny gold chains about their necks, pearl ear-rings 
in their ears. They had smooth fruit-like cheeks 
curving outward to perfect bell mouths. When 
they sang they lifted tlieir full dusky throats like 
grand birds. They were evidently of the elite 
of Norfolk. On the other hand, there were 
numbers of baggy and voluminous ladies with 
enormous bosoms, almost visibly perspiring. 
They thronged and they thronged, and all the 
red-cushioned seats filled up. There were men 
of all types, from the perfect West African Negro 
to the polished American Arab, yellow men, 
brown men, lots with large tortoiseshell spectacles, 
all with close-cropped hair which showed the 
Runic lines of tlieir hard heads. Fans were 
provided for every worshipper, and noisy religious 
and family talk filled the whole chapel. 

We began with some fine singing — not deep 
and harmonious and complex as that of the 
Russians, but hard, resonant, and breezy, followed 
by conventional prayers and the reading of the 
Scriptures. The Pastor then sent some one to 
ask me if I would come forward and give them 
Christian greeting in a few words. I was much 



42 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

astonished, as I did not know one ever broke 
into the midst of Divine Service in that way. 
However, I came forward and confronted the 
strange sea of dusky eager faces and the thousand 
waving paper fans, and I said, " Dear Brothers 
and Sisters, I am an Englishman and a white 
man, but before these I am a Christian. In 
Christ, as you know, there is neither white nor 
black, neither inferiority nor superiority of race, 
unless it is that sometimes the first shall be 
last and the last first. We know little about 
the American Negro in England, but I have 
come to find out. I have not been sent by any- 
body, but was just prompted by the Spirit to 
come out here and make your acquaintance, and 
so bring tidings home to England. I hope you 
will take that as an assurance of loving interest 
in you, and a promise for the future, I am glad 
to see you have made such progress since slavery 
days and have in Norfolk fine houses and churches 
and banks and a theatre and restaurants and 
businesses, and that you have such a large measure 
of happiness and freedom. I believe you have 
great gifts to ofi^er on the altar of American 
civilisation, and so far from remaining a problem 
you will prove a treasure." And I told some 
touching words of my friend Hugh Chapman 
of the Chapel of the Savoy in London — Mankind 
is saved, not by a white man or by a black, but 
by one who combines both — the little brown 
Man of Nazareth. 

It was a strange sensation, that of facing the 
Negro congregation. I could find no touchy 



II 



IN VIRGINIA 43 



no point of contact, could indeed take nothing 
from them. The spiritual atmosphere was an 
entirely different one from that of a gathering of 
Whites. I should have been inclined to say that 
there was no spiritual atmosphere whatever. 
For me it was Uke speaking to an empty room 
and a vast collection of empty seats. But I 
know there was something there, though I could 
not realise it. 

After the service there came up to me a purely 
delightful creature, full of an almost dangerous 
ardour for what I had said. This was Miss Sybil 
Moses, the leading spirit at the Liberty Club for 
coloured soldiers and Jack Tars. In the afternoon 
I listened to some wonderful singing at another 
church. The little black organist woman sang 
at the top of her voice whilst she bent over the 
keys, and waved the spirit into her choir by eager 
movements with the back of her hand. 

" Take me, shake me, don't let me sleep " they 
sang, and it was infinitely worth while. I felt 
that in the great ultimate harmony we could not 
do without this voice, the voice of the praise of the 
dark children. 



Next week I went over to Newport News. 
On a wall in Norfolk I read " T. Adkins, New- 
port News," and underneath some one had 
written, '' You could not pay me to live there : 
Robert Johnson, Norfolk." 

That might possibly explain the relativity of 
the two places. Newport News is a ramshackle 



44 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

settlement on the sands across the water from 
Norfolk. It has a nondescript, ill-dressed, well- 
paid, wild, working-class population, with all 
manner of cheap shops and low lodging-houses. 
On every fifth window seems to be scrawled in 
whitewash " HOT DOG 5 cents." It was 
explained to me that this is sausage of a rather 
poor quality. I had never seen the article so 
frankly named elsewhere. For the rest, a good 
deal of manifest immorality strolls the streets at 
night or is voiced on dark verandahs. The 
Police station is a place of considerable mystery 
and glamour, and I should say Newport News 
at this season would have proved an interesting 
research for the vice-raker. I paid three dollars 
for a room whose lock had been burst off, and 
one of whose windows was broken, a mosquito- 
infested hovel, but the only room obtainable. 

A very interesting young coloured trainer 
took me over the shipbuilding yards the next 
day. He was an enthusiastic boxer, and I asked 
him the cause of Negro excellence in this sport. 
For there are at least three Negro boxers whom 
no white boxers have been able to beat, and 
this excellence has caused the championship rules 
to be altered so as to disqualify coloured 
champions. 

He said it was due to quicker eye and greater 
aggressiveness, above all, to greater aggressiveness. 
The Negro is a born fighter. It is true he 
has greater endurance and a much harder skull, 
but he has also remarkable aptitude. 

" Has the Negro boxer more science.'^" I asked. 



II IN VIRGINIA 



45 



" No, perhaps not so much. He has fighting 
blood, that's what it is. His ancestors fought for 
thousands of years.'* 

I remarked that the Red Indians fought also, 
but they were poor boxers. He put that down to 
slight physique. 

" I got tired of watching boxing-matches in 
the Army," said I. " The bulkier and more 
brutal types always seemed to get the better of 
those who were merely skilful. I expect that is 
why we don't like watching a Negro and a white 
man boxing, it is too much a triumph of body 
over mind." 

" There's no finer sight than to watch two 
Negroes well matched," said the trainer, with a 
smile. 

I thought good boxing showed more the 
animal side of a man, and I recalled a reported 
saying of Jack Johnson — '* I'se ready to fight 
mos' any man that they is, an' if ye cahn find 
any man, why, just send me down a great big 
black Russian bear. . . ." 

" It jarred the white folk terrible bad that 
Jack Johnson was the real champion of the 
world," said the trainer. *' When the news came 
through of Jack Johnson beating Jeffries so far 
away as Denver, Colorado, the white folk began 
pulling the Negroes off the street-cars in Norfolk, 
Virginia, and beating them, just to vent their 
rage, they were so sore." 

I thought that rather amusing, but the trainer 
took a gloomy view. However, in we went to 
the shipbuilding yard and looked at many great 



46 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

vessels in dry dock. Out came a motley crowd 
of men, blacker than their nature through the 
dirt of their work. The ship-painters were 
splashed from head to foot with the characteristic 
red paint of ships, and looked like some new tribe ; 
the blue-shirted riveters and chippers were all 
frayed and ragged from contact with sharp edges 
and iron. These Negro workers were very 
happy and jolly. They seemed nearly all to be 
on piece-work and earned in most cases ten 
dollars a day, and in some exceptional cases and 
upon occasion twenty or twenty -five dollars. 
The riveters, according to the scale of pay, 
seemed to be capable of earning huge wages, 
and many of them were comparatively well-off, 
possessing their homes, and giving their children 
a good education. The trainer pointed out to 
me his athletic pets. He was employed by the 
company to organise competitions and races and 
baseball teams and the like. The strongest 
Negroes seemed among the gentlest. The heavy- 
weight champion was a large and beautiful child. 
He never lost his temper in the ring, because, 
as I was told, he never needed to. His ears 
were not turned to *' cauliflower " and his nose 
not flattened out — as yet. 

The lunch hour was remarkable for the swarms 
of men belched forth by the works. A twenty- 
cent lunch was ready for all. Wives and mothers 
also were allowed to come and bring food to 
supplement what was served at the stands. 
Lunch over, the men formed into groups, and in 
some places there were Bible discussions, in others 



II IN VIRGINIA 47 

sporting competitions. Despite high wages I 
noticed some Negroes going about picking up 
crusts and putting them into paper bags, pre- 
sumably to feed the chickens with when they 
got home. My guide said this was due to the 
" Save " propaganda which had been carried on. 
Y.M.C.A. work was very much to the fore, an 
industrial " Y " having been financed by the 
owners of the yard. I was told that a little while 
ago the company found it difficult to keep the 
young Negro boys — the heaters and passers, on 
whose work the riveter depends, for one boy 
heats the rivet and another passes it, and the 
riveter strikes it home. They found so little 
in the place to interest them that they drifted away 
from the works. It was this that had determined 
the firm to embark on a programme of physical 
culture and games. There was also a Y.M.C.A. 
hut and its usual appurtenances. A long list 
of evening classes was being arranged. A large 
building had been promised to the " Y " if it 
made good. 

I could not find any man who belonged to a 
genuine trade-union, affiliated to the American 
Federation of Labour, though most belonged to 
" Coloured People's Brotherhoods." The Whites 
with whom they worked, and with whom they 
have upon occasion great riveting competitions, 
were presumably non-Union also, but that is 
common ; Labour in America is poorly organised, 
compared with Labour in Great Britain. Almost 
the whole of Negro Labour is at present outside 
the recognised Unions, and for that reason can 



48 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

almost always be used to break strikes. This is 
of course unfortunate for the Negro, who is thus 
branded as a " blackleg " in addition to being 
black by nature, which was reproach enough. 

I met a strange character in the evening, one 
of the coloured organisers, a friend of the white 
men, and in with the bosses of the yards. He 
was possibly a descendant of the type of Negro 
who in slavery days acted as agent for the slave- 
merchants, and was to be found on the West 
African shore lording it over the batches of poor 
savages wJio with hands tied up were being hustled 
on to the slave-ships. It used to be a recognisable 
type. When they themselves were brought over 
to America they became overseers or field-drivers, 
and brutal enough they were to their fellow-men 
of colour. To-day they are foremen or speeders- 
up of Negro gangs, or you find them under the 
auspices of " Welfare." 

This was a lazy Negro, fat and heavy, with a 
confused non-thinking mind, great sooty lips, 
and bloodshot eyes. He told me he put on a 
wig at night and prowled about the town, spying 
on vice. The great numbers of black soldiers 
embarking or disembarking had attracted sharps 
and bad women of all kinds. The streets were 
infested with sin, and he knew which boarding- 
houses were disreputable and which were properly 
kept. He knew where there was drink, and 
who was organising the " bootlegging " business, 
and what graft the police took. Though sluggish 
by nature, this gloomy soul evidently got full 
of life at night — spying on the people. 



II IN VIRGINIA 



49 



He told me the richest coloured man in New- 
port News was a dentist who charged as much as 
six dollars an hour for stopping teeth. The 
example of this dentist's success had caused several 
fathers to educate their children for dentistry 
radier than the Church or the Law. " But we 
Negroes don't want to rise," said he. " We 
want to show off. We are great imitators of 
swagger. They'll come wearing a forty-dollar 
suit and a clean collar, and brandish a cigar in 
your face when that is all they have in the world. 
We're a crude people, sir." 

There was on the one hand in Newport News 
a nucleus of prosperous Negro families, and on 
the other hand the many gambling-places and 
dancing-dens where health and ambition and 
money and everything else which can help a 
man to rise could be squandered. In time to 
come, when society takes root, Newport News 
should become a Negro stronghold. Already 
there are so many Negroes no white man dare 
start a riot. 

Not far from Newport News is Hampton 

Institute, the " Negro Eton," which produces 

the Curzons and the Cecils of the coloured race, 

! as some one amusingly expressed it. It is the 

crown of Northern effort to educate the Negro. 

Endowment and instruction are mostly by Whites. 

, Every one is engaged in vital self-support, and 

I the students plough the fields, make boots, build 

waggons, print books, and learn all manner of 

practical lessons in life. Above all, they are made 

ready to teach and help others of their race. It 

E 



so CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

is the show-place of the Negro world, and rightly 
so, as most of those who lead Negrodom hail as 
yet from Hampton. 

I did not myself visit Hampton, because it 
has been adequately described in books, and 
generally speaking I would rather study the 
Negro in his unperfumed haunts where he is less 
disguised with Northern culture. Perhaps one 
learns more of the needs and requirements of the 
Negroes by visiting a poor school where the 
ordinary routine of teaching is going on. I 
visited a High School named after Booker T. 
Washington, and talked to the students in the 
classes. The young lady who took me to the 
head-master wore a low-cut white blouse from 
which her dainty neck and her head of kinky 
hair grew like a palm tree. She had dogs' teeth 
for ear-drops hanging from her ears, and large 
kind questioning eyes. The head-master was a 
quiet young man from some Negro LIniversity, 
full of pent-up enthusiasm for his race and for 
learning. He had boundless enthusiasm for the 
Negro people and their possibilities. Was not 
the greatest French writer a coloured man,^ and 
the greatest Russian poet of Negro blood ? ^ We 
went in to the Composition class. They were 
doing '' Argumentation," which is perhaps a 
trifle dull, but we discussed brevity and the 
principle of suspense. In the Enghsh class each 
child had read Si/as Marner and was taking it 
in turn to re-tell the story when called upon by 
Teacher. This was pretty well done, though 



II IN VIRGINIA 51 

Americanisms were frequent, and the two brothers 
were said to be " disagreeable " when it was 
meant that they disagreed. In French the whole 
class was standing round the walls of the room, 
writing French sentences on the black-boards 
fitted into the panelling. French was very- 
popular. Every child wanted to go to France 
by and by. In the Latin class we discussed tlie 
merits of Caesar, in the Cookery class whether 
they ate what they cooked, in the Needlework, 
invisible mending — when suddenly the fire-bell 
sounded. Each class at once got up and filed out 
in orderly manner. In one minute the whole 
school of seven hundred black children was 
cleared. Then they marched back in twos, 
shoulder to shoulder, in fine style, to the rub-a- 
dub-dub of a kettledrum. It was a surprise 
alarm called by a visiting fire-inspector. None, 
even of the teachers, had known whether the alarm 
was real. 

The teachers here were all black, and possessed 
of the greatest enthusiasm ; the children pre- 
sented some hopeless types, but they were mostly 
very eager and intelligent. The methods of 
teaching seemed to be advanced, but there were 
many deficiencies, notably that of the chemistry 
class, where all the apparatus was in a tiny cup- 
board, and consisted of some bits of tubing, a few 
old test-tubes, and some empty bottles. 

It was a grievance, and I thought a legitimate 
one, that whereas the white schools were given 
good buildings with every latest convenience, 
less was thought good enough for the Negro 



52 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

children. Though white sympathisers with the 
ex-slave had been very generous in endowing 
Negro education, their good work was more than - 
neutralised by the Southern local authorities, who ' 
held the point of view that education spoiled the 
" nigger." If it were not for the enthusiasm 
of the Negro teachers, who carry on in any cir- _ 
cumstances, it might easily have happened that | 
the Coloured People had a whole series of well- ' 
endowed universities and colleges like Fisk and 
Hampton, but no elementary or secondary school . 
education worth the name. » 

Lack of goodwill toward the Negro thus 
expresses itself in many ways : the failure to 
repair his roads, the failure to give him equal 
facilities for education and self-improvement, 
and his exclusion from the public libraries. The 
white man will not say " No " to grants of money . 
which give him handsome Carnegie library I 
buildings for nothing or will raise universities, ^ 
even Negro universities, but he will not fulfil 
his part of the unwritten contract — and honour 
all philanthropy by indiscriminate goodwill. 

After visiting the school I saw glimpses of 
Negro women at work in characteristic places of 
earning a living. The management was always 
very sensitive about strangers being present, so 
it was possible to find out little about the con- 
ditions. One shop was full of girls sewing ready- 
cut trousers on machines run by electricity. The 
trousers were cut in Baltimore and sent down here 
to be sewn cheaply by local coloured labour. A 
Jew was in charge. A Negro woman was looking 



II IN VIRGINIA 



53 



after the " welfare " of the girls. Another was 
a tobacco factory where girls earned eleven 
dollars a week, working from 7.30 a.m. to 5.30 
P.M., stripping tobacco-leaf in airy and fragrant 
rooms. At piece-work they earned from six cents 
a pound. 

I visited the publishing office of the yournal 
and Guide, where the Negroes not only edit a 
paper but manufacture their own type and do 
everything themselves — one of a hundred Negro 
newspapers published in the United States. The 
average number of spelling errors in many of 
these sheets seemed to be about three a para- 
graph, but that in no wise renders them ridiculous 
or deters the pen of the ready writers. Negroes 
have a passion for journalism which is out of pro- 
portion to their present development and capacity. 

As I came out of the publishing office with 
the editor we saw a hearse. It was drawn by 
a motor, and it was a new idea to me, that of 
being motored to one's grave. The editor made 
a sign and die hearse stopped. " Just a moment," 
said he, and a lugubriously cloaked Ethiopian 
with large shining teeth stepped down. 

" This is Undertaker Brown," said the editor. 

" Always at yo seyvice, sar," said the under- 
taker. '*Is yo thinking of taking a ride with me?" 

I said I was not meditating on that sad course 
yet. 

" It's a fine hearse," said Brown — ** and look, 
they is steel clamps to keep the coffin steady (he 
swung open the rear doors) and speshal recep- 
pacles fo' the flowers." 



54 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

I thanked him, and we shook hands effusively. 

All the Negroes took charge of me. It was 
no difficult task to see their ways of life. It 
was impossible not to feel happy in the midst of 
their childish vivacity and enthusiasm and make- 
believe. Their grievances were almost lost sight m 
of in the sunshine of prosperity in Eastern 
Virginia. Sybil Moses told me how in the Red 
Cross drives during the war she " led the cullud 
folk over the top," and the vividness of her story 
of Negro vying with Negro as to who should 
subscribe most money, and how she defied the 
white " crackers " ^ to continue lynching and 
persecuting them in the face of such patriotism 
as they had shown was not only instructive but 
extraordinarily amusing and also touching : how 
a large audience of white people was listening to 
a combined " platform " of black and white 
orators, and Negro choirs were singing " spirit- 
uals " whilst the collection plates rolled round, 
and Sybil when she arrived at the hall was so 
dead-beat with rushing round the town all day 
that she fell in a faint and she prayed, " Lord, if 
I gain strength I'll take it for a sign that I am 
to speak." And she came to herself and went 
on to the platform and told the white folk 
straight — what she felt — how nine-tenths of her 
people could not spell the word Democracy and 
had indeed only just heard of it, and yet they 
sent their children to wounds and death, and they 
themselves subscribed their last dimes for patri- 
otic causes. But what did America give in return .'* 

^ Americanese for " biscuits," slang for a Southern white man. 



II IN VIRGINIA 5S 

And at the end she overheard one of the worst 
" crackers " remark that he could not help 
admiring her, she was " so durned sincere." 

The last evening I spent in this corner of 
Virginia was at a resort of coloured soldiers and 
sailors, and I had a talk with a boy who had held 
a commission in the Ninety-second Division, a 
Black unit which had covered itself with glory 
in France. He was a lieutenant, and was at the 
taking of St. Mihiel. The Negro marines were 
also very interesting — eager, serious, and sober 
fellows. They were proud of being in Uncle 
Sam's Navy, but wanted a chance of advance- 
ment there, did not wish to remain tvventy years 
in the same grade, but hoped desperately for a 
gold stripe in time, and the chance to become 
petty officer. Soldiers and sailors surged in 
and out of the hall, smoked cigarettes, drank 
soda, and chattered. I heard no foul talk, and I 
took much pleasure in their appearance. I felt 
what a fine body of guardians of their country 
could be made of them if once prejudice were 
finally overcome. In this part of Eastern 
Virginia, the apex of the South, the new Black 
world seemed very promising and had gone far 
in its fifty-seven years of freedom. 



The way from Norfolk to Richmond is up 
the James River, and I continued my journey 
on a boat that had evidently come from New York 
— redolent as it was of long-distance passengers. 
There was a seat, however, just under the Captain's 



56 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

look-out, and there was nothing before me but 
the progressing prow and the silver expanse of 
the river. A classical voyage this — for it was up 
the James River, named after James the First, 
that the first pioneers of Raleigh's virgin land 
made their way. It is felt to be romantic, 
because they were not Roundheads nor Quakers 
nor Plymouth Brethren nor other sober-liveried 
folk, but gentlemen of sword and ruff, courtier- 
sailors who upon occasion would be ready to throw 
their cloaks in the mud for a Queen to tread upon. 
The tradition of courtier survives, and a rich 
man of Virginia is to-day a Virginian gentle- 
man, though there is scarcely another State in 
America where the landed proprietors claim to 
be gentry. The James River is significant for 
another reason. At little Jamestown, which never 
came to anything as a city, the first Negro slaves 
were landed in America in 1618, and from the 
small beginning of one shipload three hundred 
years ago nation-wide Negrodom, with all its 
black millions, has arisen. 

As was the case later in Georgia and other 
colonies, the " gentlemen " were not of much use, 
conceiving their task to be rather one of hunting 
than farming, and there arose such a famine 
among them that the poorer sort dug up an 
Indian that had been buried and stewed him 
with roots and herbs, and one} man, it is told, 
actually killed and ate his wife. To the languish- 
ing colony were sent ship-loads of jail-birds and 
English tramps. These also, whenever they 
could escape bond - slavery, understood them- 



II IN VIRGINIA 57 

selves as gentry. The Negroes when they came 
were no doubt hailed with joy as the obvious 
human beasts of burden who could be forced 
to do the heavy work. At last a few honest 
working men began to emigrate from England 
to Virginia, and the germ of what is now a vital 
organism of the great Republic found life. 

Virginia grew prosperous in the cultivation 
of tobacco, which remains to-day the staple 
production of a comparatively poor State. It 
is too far North for the cultivation of cotton, and 
though doubtless possessing great mineral wealth 
industrial research has not gone so far as in 
Pennsylvania. It is essentially a conservative 
State. Slavery is said to have depressed its 
economic life so that neighbouring Northern 
States whose development began much later 
easily overtook it. A somewhat patriarchal, 
settled state of life took possession of Virginia, 
a new feudalism which was out of keeping with 
hustling and radical America. It is remarkable, 
however, how many law-makers, administrators, 
soldiers, and presidents Virginia has given to 
the United States. Starting with gentry it has 
bred gentry. 

And with regard to the Negro the State has a 
good record. Despite the various inequalities 
of treatment and Jim-Crow-ism noticeable by 
any one who is observant, there is little or no 
brutality or nigger-baiting. Lynching is rare, 
and it must be supposed the alleged Negro 
attacks upon white women must be rare also. 
Such relatively good conditions prevail in Virginia 



58 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

that the whole South takes shelter behind her. 
And as the proud Virginian reckons himself 
par excellence the Southerner, he is often annoyed 
when he reads of the worse treatment of the 
Negroes farther South. Virginia should remem- 
ber she is not the whole South, and she does not 
exert even a moral influence upon Georgia and 
Mississippi. In that respect she seems to be as 
helpless as New England and the Puritans, to 
whom politically she has generally been in 
opposition. 

The old Virginian families bound the Negroes 
to them with undying devotion. They became 
part of the family, with all the licence of pet 
children. They fought for them and assisted 
them in the Civil War with the creature-like 
devotion of clansmen for their chief. The 
" veterans " who still survive, Negroes like 
Robert E. Lee's cook, who was one of many 
picturesque personalities at the Atlanta reunion, 
are of a different type from the Negroes of to-day. 
They identified themselves with their master 
and mistress's estate and person in a way that is 
truly touching. Surely of all beings the Negro 
is capable of the strongest and most pathetic 
human attachments. 

Freedom, however, and the new ideas blew 
autumnly over the Virginian summer. All 
changed. The family retinues broke up. The 
afl^ections were alienated. The new race of 
Negro individualists arose. The old " mammies " 
and " uncles " were a people apart, and are dying 
out fast now. The new Negroes are with and 



II IN VIRGINIA 59 

for themselves. They make shift to be happy 
and to amuse themselves without the white man. 
And they have now their schools, their churches, 
which are like religious clubs, their political 
societies, theatres, and other segregated interests. 

These segregated interests have produced, and 
tend to produce, an ever-increasing Negro cul- 
ture, and though that culture may be somewhat 
despised because of its humble beginnings there 
seems no reason why it should not have a future 
which will compare with that of white America. 
But south of Richmond and south of Virginia 
there is progressively less of this Negro culture 
to be found. There are the oases of Tuskegee 
Institute and Atlanta and Fisk Universities, but 
white opinion is adverse to Negro education 
and the black masses have been unable to over- 
crow their neighbours. In Richmond and north 
of it, however, tlie black man has leave to breathe 
awhile, and there are interesting developments. 

Richmond, which in 1853 reminded Olmsted 
of Edinburgh, in its picturesqueness, has now 
quintupled its population, and spread greatly. It 
is still a handsome city, and its centre of Grecian 
Capitol and public gardens is very pleasant. It 
is the third blackest city in the United States, 
between thirty-five and forty per cent of its 
population being coloured. A certain General 
Gabriel led an insurrection of Negro slaves 
against Richmond in 1801, and the city has 
always adopted itself as self-constituted warden 
of the white man's safety. The city has, how- 
ever, been free enough from disturbance since 



6o CHILDREN OF TOE SLAVES ii 

the Civil War. It has its well-endowed Negro 
colleges, and on the other hand its less satisfac- 
torily-placed elementary and secondary schools. 
As in Norfolk, Negro business is thriving, though 
it has deeper roots. 

It is less promising west of Richmond. A 
duller economic life prevails, and conditions are 
more normal, less affected by the prosperity of 
war-industrialism. I travelled by train to Lynch- 
burg. As this was my first experience of trains 
south of the Mason-Dixon line I was interested 
to observe the Jim - Crow arrangements. The 
Negroes are kept to separate waiting-rooms, and 
book their tickets at other booking-windows, 
and they are put into separate carriages in the 
trains, and not allowed promiscuously with white 
people as in the North. They have not quite 
so good accommodation though they pay the 
same fare ; sometimes there is less space, some- 
times there is no separate smoking-compartment. 
Drawing-room cars and " sleepers " are gener- 
ally unavailable. Coloured people consider it a 
great grievance, but it is probably the insult im- 
plied in their segregation that affects them most. 
There is not an enormous disparity in the comfort. 
Inability to obtain food on long-distance trains 
was often mentioned to me as the chief injustice, 
but the personal aspect of the matter was always 
to the fore : — " We don't want to mix in with 
white people, or with those don't want us. We 
can get on very well by ourselves. ..." They 
were always protesting. 

In the North, promiscuously seated black and 



II IN VIRGINIA 6 1 

white passengers all seem quite happy and at ease. 
Mixing them works well. There is never any 
hitch. In the South, however, segregation seems 
to be for the Negro's good. The less personal 
contact he has with the white man the safer 
he is from sudden outbursts of racial feeling. Of 
course the railway companies ought to give the 
Negro equal accommodation for equal fare — but 
that is another matter. 

Lynchburg is a beautifully-situated little city 
beside the Blue Ridge Mountains. It is a great 
market for dark tobacco. It manufactures iron 
pipes, ploughs, boots and shoes, and a number of 
other articles, and boasts of " ideal labour con- 
ditions and no strikes." It is named after the 
original planter, Charles Lynch, an Irish boy who 
ran from home and married a Quaker. It lapsed 
from Quakerism to a very sinful state, and then is 
said to have been reformed by the Methodists. 
Now there is nothing to trouble the mind un- 
pleasantly at Lynchburg. 

The public library seemed to have paused sick 
in 1905. It is called the Jones Memorial Library, 
an impressive white building with an array of 
white steps leading up to it. Jones himself, who 
was a business man and served a very short while 
in the war of North and Soutli, is shown in full 
martial attire drawing his sword, half-way up the 
stone steps — as it were in act of driving readers 
away. A cold cloister-like air pervaded the 
building. Negroes were not permitted in, and 
white people did not enter much. The librarian, 
however, was unusually kind and obliging, and 



62 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ii 

lent me a book without taking a deposit. This 
lady said she would rather sit next to a decent 
black woman in a train than to the average 
white. 

" We all had our black mammies — they 
treated us as if we were their own babies. Can 
you blame us if sometimes we love them as our 
own flesh and blood .'' All the trouble we have 
is due to Northerners coming South. And if a 
Negro gets lynched, what a fuss is made of it ! " 

I met the manager of a tobacco warehouse. 
He was not willing that I should see his Negroes 
at work and talk to them, but he assured me in 
a bland way, cigar in hand, that his pickers were 
a jolly crowd who knew they were well paid and 
would never go on strike. He paid thirty to 
thirty-five cents the hour for Negro labour. 

" The war has played the devil with the 
niggers," said he. " It has spread about the idea 
of high wages. The North has been especially 
to blame, luring the niggers up there with the 
bait of big money. It has caused a rise in wages 
all over the South." 

His employees were unskilled. In his opinion 
no Negroes were ever used for skilled work. 
What I had to tell him of Newport News and its 
shipyards was beyond his comprehension. As 
for Hampton Institute, he averred that he had 
never heard that it produced capable artisans. 
In his opinion there had been some good Negro 
carpenters and wheelwrights in Slavery, but 
none since. Freedom had been very bad for 
the Negro. Yes, he utterly approved of lynching. 



II IN VIRGINIA 63 

It was always justified, and mistakes were never 
made. He had a watertight mind. 

A mile or so away was Virginia College, a 
red-brick structure in the woods where in happy 
seclusion a few hundred coloured men and women 
were being enfranchised of civilisation and culture. 
A student took me to his study-bedroom, hung 
with portraits of John Brown and Booker T. 
Washington. The Bible was still the most im- 
portant book, and it occupied the pride of place, 
though it was interleaved with pages of the Negro 
radical monthly the Crisis. The student was 
an intense and earnest boy with all the extra 
seriousness of persecuted race-consciousness. He 
said, in a low voice, that he would do anything 
at any cost for his people. He said the present 
leaders of the Negro world would fail, because of 
narrow outlook, but the next leaders would win 
great victories for colour. And he would be 
ready to follow the new leaders. What a contrast 
they were ! — the boss of the tobacco-factory, 
cigar in hand, *' talking wise " on the nigger, 
and the quiet Negro intellectual in his college, 
whetting daily the sword of learning and 
ambition. 



Ill 



ORATORS AND ACTORS, PREACHERS 

AND SINGERS 

The aspirations and convictions of the Negroes 
of to-day were well voiced in a speech I heard at 
Harlem. I had been warned that I ought to 
hear the " red-hot orator of the Afro-American 
race," and so I went to hear him. The orator 
was Dean Pickens ^ of Morgan College, Baltimore. 
When he came to the platform the coloured 
audience not only cheered him by clapping, 
but stood up and cried aloud three times : 

" Yea Pickens ! " 

The chairman had said he would have to leave 
about half after five, but the speaker must not 
allow himself to be disturbed by that but go 
right on. Pickens, who was one of the very 
black and very cheerful types of his race, turned 
to the chairman and said : 

*' You won't disturb me^ brother ! But if 
you're going at half after five, let's shake hands 
right now, and then I can go straight ahead." 

And they shook hands with great gusto, and 
every one laughed and felt at ease. Pickens 

^ Now field-secretary of the National Association for the Advancement 
of the Coloured People. 

64 



Ill ORATORS AND ACTORS 65 

was going to speak ; nothing could disturb 
Pickens ; they relaxed themselves to a joyful 
anticipatory calm. 

Just before tlie turn of Pickens to speak a 
white lady-journalist had rushed on to the plat- 
form and rushed off between two pressing engage- 
ments, and had given the audience a *' heart-to- 
heart " talk on Bolsheviks and agitators, and had 
told them how thankful the Negroes ought to be 
that they were in America and not in the Congo 
still. She gained a good deal of applause because 
she was a woman, and a White, and was glib, but 
the thinking Negroes did not care for her doc- 
trine, and were sorry she could not wait to hear 
it debated. 

" Brothers, they're always telling us what 
we ought to be," said the orator with an engaging 
smile. " But there are many different opinions 
about what ought to be ; it's what we are that 
matters. As a coloured pastor said to his flock 
one day — * Brothers and sisters, it's not the ought- 
ness of this problem that we have to consider, 
but the /j-ness ! ' I am going to speak about tlie 

/Vness. Sister S , who has just spoken, has 

had to go to make a hurry call elsewhere, but 
I am sorry she could not stay. I think she might 
perhaps have heard something worth while this 
afternoon. Sister S warned us against agi- 
tators and radicals. Now, I am not against or 
for agitators. The question is, 'What are they 
agitating about .? ' Show me the agitator, I 
say. President Wilson is a great agitator : he 
is agitating a League of Nations. Jesus Christ 

F 



66 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iii 

was a great agitator : He agitated Christianity. 
The Pharisees and Sadducees didn't Hke His 
agitating, and they fixed Him. But He was a 
good agitator, and we're not against Him. Then, 
again, the Irish are great agitators ; the Jews are 
great agitators ; there are good and bad agitators. 
{^Applause.) But, brothers, I'll tell you who is the 
greatest agitator in this country . . . the greatest 
agitator is injustice. (Sensation?) When injustice 
disappears I'll be against agitators, or I'll be ready 
to see them put in a lunatic asylum. (Applause.) 

" Sister S was very hard on the radicals. 

There again, show me the radical, I say. A 
man may be radically wrong, yes, but he may 
also be radically right. (Laughter.) 

" As for the Bolsheviks, it's injustice is mak- 
ing Bolshevism. It's injustice that changes quiet 
inoffensive school-teachers and working-men into 
Bolsheviks, just as it is injustice is stirring up the 
coloured people. Not that we are Bolsheviks. 
I am not going to say anything against Bolsheviks 
either. Show me the Bolshevik first, I say, and 
then I'll know whether I'm against him. People 
are alarmed because the number of Bolsheviks is 
increasing. But what is making them increase ? 
If America is such a blessed country, why is she 
making all these Bolsheviks ? You know a tree 
by its fruits, and so you may know a country by 
what it produces. These Bolsheviks that we 
read of being deported in the Soviet Ark ^ weren't 
Bolshevik when they came to this country. It 

^ Nickname of the Buford, a ship employed by the U.S. Government 
to deport Emma Goldman and others to Russia. 



Ill ORATORS AND ACTORS 67 

comes to this : that we've raised a crop of 
Bolshevism in this country and are exporting it 
to Europe, and now we're busy sowing another 
crop. Stop sowing injustice, and Bolshevism will 
cease growing. {Applause again. ^ 

" But there is less Bolshevism among the 
coloured people than among the white, because 
the coloured are more humble, more subservient, 
more used to inequalities. We are always being 
told that we are backward, and we believe it ; 
bad, and we believe it ; untrustworthy, and we 
believe it ; immoral, and we believe it. We are 
always being told what we ought to be. But I'll 
come back to what we are. 

" We may be immoral ; we may be a danger 
to the white women. But has any one ever 
honestly compared the morality of Whites and 
Blacks .'' They will tell you there is not sufficient 
evidence to make a comparison, or they will bring 
you pamphlets and paragraphs out of newspapers, 
records of disgusting crimes ; and we know very 
well that in twelve million Negroes there are 
bound to be some half-wits and criminals capable 
of terrible breaches of morality. But at best it 
is a paper evidence against the Negro, whilst 
there is flesh and blood evidence against the 
White. The moral standard of the Whites is 
written in the flesh and blood of three million of 
our race. [Another sensation.) Brothers, there's 
one standard for the white man, and another 
for the coloured man. (Sensation redoubled.) A 
coloured man's actions are not judged in the 
same light as those of a white man. 



68 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iii 

" Well, Fm not against that. It is giving us 
a higher ideal. A coloured man has got to be 
much more careful in this country than a white 
man. He'll be more heavily punished for the 
same crime. If he gets into a dispute with a 
white man he's bound to lose his case. So he 
won't get into the dispute. (Laughter.) Where 
a white man gets five years' imprisonment the 
Negro gets put in the electric chair. Where 
the white man gets six days he gets two years. 
If a white man seduces a coloured girl she never 
gets redress. If the other thing occurs the Negro 
is legally executed, or lynched. What is the 
result of all that inequality } Why, it is making 
us a more moral, less criminal, less violent people 
than the Whites. Once at a mixed school they 
were teaching the black and white boys to jump. 
The white boys jumped and the black boys 
jumped. But when it was the black boys' turn 
the teacher always lifted the jumping-stick a few 
inches. What was the consequence ? Why, after 
a while, every coloured boy in that school could 
jump at least a foot higher than any white boy. 
[Renewed sensation, in which Pickens attempted 
several times to resume.) 

" That is what is happening to the Negro race 
in America. We are being taught to jump a 
foot higher than the Whites. We will jump it, 
or we will break our necks. [Laughter.) 

*' Of course a great difference separates the 
black from the white still. And I don't say 
that the white man hasn't given us a chance. 
If our positions had been transposed, and we had 



in ORATORS AND ACTORS 69 

been masters and the white folk had been the 
slaves, I'm not sure that we wouldn't have 
treated them worse than they have treated us. 
But the white folk make a mistake when they 
think we're not taking the chances they give 
us. We are taking them. We are covering the 
ground that separates black from white. The 
white man is not outstripping us in the race. 
We are nearer to him than we were — not farther 
away. We haven't caught up, but we're touch- 
ing. We are always doing things we never did 
before. {^Applause.) 

" We shall not have cause to regret the time 
of persecution and injustice and the higher 
standard of morality that has been set us. 
Brothers, it's all worth while. Our boys here 
have been to France and bled and suffered for 
white civilisation and white justice. We didn't 
want to go. We didn't know anything about 
it. But it's been good for us. We've made the 
cause of universal justice our cause. We have 
taken a share in world - sufferings and world- 
politics. It's going to help raise us out of our 
obscurity. We have discovered the French, and 
shall always be grateful to them. We didn't 
know France before, but every coloured soldier 
is glad now that he fought for France. If 
there is to be a League of Nations we know 
France will stand by us. And we shall have 
a share in the councils of Humanity — with our 
coloured brethren in all parts of the world." 
[Sensation again.) 

The orator spoke for two hours, and the above 



70 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iii 

is only a personal remembrance put down after- 
wards. His actual speech is therefore much 
shortened. But that was the sense and the 
flavour of it. It was given in a voice of humour 
and challenge, resonant, and yet everlastingly 
whimsical. Laughter rippled the whole time. 
I shook hands with him afterwards. For he was 
warm and eloquent and moving, as few speakers 
I have heard. He was utterly exhausted, for he 
had drawn his words from his audience, and two 
thousand people had been pulling at his spirit 
for two hours. 

It was delightful to listen to a race-propa- 
gandist so devoid of hatred, malice, and unchari- 
tableness. Some regard humour as the greatest 
concomitant of wisdom, and this representative 
Negro certainly had both. He never touched on 
the tragedy of race-hatred and racial injustice 
but he saw the humour of them also. And the 
coloured audience saw the humour also. With 
the English there would have been anger, with 
the French spontaneous insurrection, with the 
Jews sackcloth and ashes, but with the Negroes it 
was humour. There was no collective hate or 
spite, but, manifest always, a desire to be happy, 
even in the worst circumstances. 

It is curious, however, that the Negro has a 
livelier sense of the humour of tragedy than the 
white man. For two months I visited a Negro 
theatre every week, and I was much struck by 
the fact that where there was most cause to weep 
or feel melancholy the coloured audience was 
most provoked to mirth. Negro companies, 



Ill ORATORS AND ACTORS 71 

such as the Lafayette Players, play '* Broadway 
successes," melodramas, classical dramas, musical 
comedies, and indeed anything that would be 
staged in a white man's theatre. But the result 
is nearly always comedy. As upon occasion white 
men burn cork and make up as Negroes, so the 
Negroes paint themselves white and make up as 
white men and women. Watching them is an 
entrancing study, because there is not only the 
original drama and its interest, but superadded 
the interpretation by Africans of what they think 
the white man is and does and says. Some of 
it is like the servants' hall dressed up as master 
and mistress and their friends, but has remarkable 
f eh city in acting. A large party, all in full 
evening dress, is very striking — only the Negro 
women are on the average so huge that when 
painted white and exposing vast fronts of bosoms 
they are somewhat incredible. A typical evening 
party on the stage, with villain and hero, looks 
very handsome, but not in any way Anglo- 
Saxon, if conceivably foreign American. The 
hero may have a perfectly villainous expression. 
One's mind is taken away from America to the 
Mediterranean. Even when painted it is impos- 
sible to look other than children of the sun. 
The drama is played with a great deal of noise. 
When the moments of passion arrive every one 
lets himself go, and the stage is swallowed up 
in a hurly-burly of violent word and action. 
There is never any difficulty in hearing what is 
being said. But even the minor characters, such 
as butler and waiter, who should be practically 



72 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES m 

mute, insist on whistling and singing as they go 
about, and serve the guests in a pas de danse. 
In one serious melodrama the butler never 
appeared but he hummed resonandy the popular 
air " Takky, yekky, yikky, yokky doola I " The 
villam or villainess is likely to act die part widi 
great verve, and generally I remarked a true- 
aptitude for acting, an ability which noise and 
violence could not hide. A white drama is 
hterally transformed on the Negro stage. The 
Negroes catch hold of any childishness or piece 
of make-beUeve and give it a sort of poetry. 
Thus, for instance. Miss Stratton-Porter's Poly- 
anna with its gospel of " Be glad'' is a cloying 
sentimentalism in the hands of the ordinary 
white company. But the Negroes make it into 
a sort of Alice in Wonderland, very amusing, 
very sweet, and very touching — something 
entirely delightful. The consciousness of the 
white person sitting in the coloured theatre is, 
however, continually disturbed by ripples of 
tittering whenever on the stage there is a sugges- 
tion of calamity. When it is melodrama that is 
being played the audience laughs all the time 
like a collection of intellectuals who have visited 
a popular theatre to watch The Silver King or 
The Girl's Cross-Roads, The very suggestion 
of disaster is funny. 

This is an indication of difference in soul. 
There are many who would see in these white- 
painted Negroes another instance of a passion for 
the imitation of white people. But one could 
hardly point to anytiiing that shows more readily 



Ill ORATORS AND ACTORS 73 

the sheer difference of black and white people 
than the Negro stage such as it is to-day. 

There is not as yet a Negro drama, but it 
certainly will arise. Ridgely Torrance's Flays 
for a Negro Theatre is perhaps the nearest 
approach so far to a genuine Negro drama, but 
the author is white. The great success of these 
plays when acted by Negroes only shows the glory 
that awaits the awakening of a true Negro 
dramatist. Every large city in America has its 
Negro theatre or music-hall or cinema-shows. 
The drama could become an organ of racial self- 
expression, and could give voice to the hopes and 
aspirations and sorrows of the coloured people 
in a very moving way. I think such a drama 
would prove highly original. Comedy would be 
derived from new sources. Tragedy would be 
conceived in a different spirit. So far from the 
Negro imitating the white man we should all be 
found imitating him — as we already imitate 
him in our dances and music. The new 
Negro humour would infect the whole Western 
world. 

It is generally called " the blues." We say 
we have a fit of the blues when we are feeling 
depressed. It is not at all a laughing matter, 
but the Negro finds that state of mind to be always 
humorous. A hundred new comic songs tell the 
humour of sorrows. All the gloomy formulas of 
everyday life have been set to music. Telling 
one's hard fortune and howling over it and 
drawing it out and infinitely bewailing it, and 
adding circumstantial minor sorrows as one goes 



74 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iii 

along and infinitely bewailing them — this is 
distinctively Negro humour. 

I visited one evening a Negro theatre where 
a musical comedy was going on — words and 
music both by Negroes. It opened with the 
usual singing and dancing chorus of Negro girls. 
They were clad in yellow and crimson and mauve 
combinations with white tapes on one side from 
the lace edge of the knicker to their dusky arms. 
They danced from the thigh rather than from the 
knee, moving waist and bosom in unrestrained 
undulation, girls with large startled-seeming eyes 
and uncontrollable masses of dark hair. A dance 
of physical joy and abandonment with no restraint 
in the toes or the knees, no veiling of the eyes, 
no half-shutting of the lips, no holding-in of the 
hair. Accustomed to the very aesthetic present- 
ment of the Bacchanalia in the Russian Ballet, 
it might be difficult to call one of those Negro 
dancers a Bacchante, and yet there was one whom 
I remarked again and again, a Queen of Sheba 
in her looks, a face like starry night, and she was 
clad slightly in mauve, and went into such 
ecstasies during the many encores that her hair 
fell down about her bare shoulders, and her 
cheeks and knees glistening with perspiration 
outshone her eyes. Following this chorus a 
love-story begins to be developed. A humorous 
mother-in-law of tremendous proportions and 
deep bass voice, her black face blackened further 
to the colour of boots, reprimands and pets her 
scapegrace son who is the comic loafer. He 
confers with his " buddy " as to how to win 



Ill ORATORS AND ACTORS 'jt, 

" Baby," the belle of Dark City. The " buddy " 
is the lugubriously stupid and faithful, and above 
all comic, Negro friend who in tiying to help 
you always does you an ill turn. *' Baby " is 
the beautiful doll of the piece — *' Honey-baby, 
sugar-baby ! " She is courted also by the villain, 
who is plausible and well-dressed and polite, but 
still provocative of mirth. The hero and the 
villain do a competitive cake-walk for the girl, 
posturising, showing-ofF, approaching and retir- 
ing, almost squatting and dancing, leaping and 
dancing, swimming through the air, throwing 
everything away from them and falling forward, 
and yet never falling, blowing out their cheeks 
and dilating their eyes, and, as it were, hoo- 
dooing and out-hoodooing one another, pseudo- 
enragement, monkey-mocking of one another, 
feigned stage-fright and pretended escapes. See- 
ing this done on a first night, the whole theatre 
was jammed and packed with Negro people, and 
they recalled the couple nine times, and still 
they gave encores. One of them, the villain, 
gave up, but the other, the hero, went on as if 
still matched, his mouth open and panting, and 
perspiration streaming through the black grease 
on his face — for he also had blackened himself 
further for fun. The wedding-service was danced 
and sung in a " scena " which would have 
enravished even a Russian audience. I had seen 
nothing so pretty or so amusing, so bewilderingly 
full of life and colour, since Sanine's production 
of the Fair of Sorochinsky in Moscow. 

The most characteristic parts of the comedy. 



76 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iii 

however, were to come. It was very lengthy, 
for Negroes do not observe White conventions 
regarding time. It would be tedious to describe 
in words what was wholly delightful to see. But 
there were two crises when the audience roared 
with joy excessively. First, when the young 
husband suspects his wife of flirting with the 
villain, and second, when he wants to make it 
up and every imaginable calamity descends upon 
his head. He arrives at his home about mid- 
night, wearing a terribly tight pair of boots and 
a suit of old dusty clothes. There is a party at 
the house ; every one is in evening dress. He 
won't go into the dance-room. He has to sit 
down and take his boots off, and henceforth 
walks about holding them in his hands. He 
sees his wife dancing with the villain, makes a 
scene, and then dramatically leaves his wife for 
ever. Left behind, she stares a moment in 
silence, and then throws herself full length on 
a low table, kicks up her heels, and vents her 
unhappiness in a series of prolonged howls and 
paroxysms which put the audience into a heaven 
of delight. The tight boots and the limp they , 
cause are blues ; the wife's grief is a blue ; and for I 
the rest of the drama the melancholy husband ' 
is seen tramping about in his socks, carrying his 
wretched boots in his hands. His unhappiness 
is long-drawn-out, but when at last he decides 
to forgive and comes back home, he is met by 
the lugubrious " buddy " outside the house who 
tells him all his wife has suffered in his absence. 
The repentant husband looks very miserable. 



Ill ORATORS AND ACTORS ^'j 

** And then a little baby-boy was born," says 
Buddy. 

The repentant husband cheers up. 

'* So like you, such a beauty ! " 

The husband waxes excited and happy, and 
asks a flood of questions. 

** But the baby died," says his lugubrious 
companion. 

The poor hero yells with sorrow. 

*' How Baby wished you were there to see little 
baby," says Buddy. " How she talked of you ! " 

" The little darling — and she has quite for- 
given me t " 

" She forgave you all right. Ah, she was a 
fine woman ; you never deserved such a woman 
as she was, so beautiful, so loving, so tender, so 
devoted — always saying your name, counting the 
days you had been away from her, and moping 
and sighing. Ah, it ate into her heart ! " 

'* Yes, Buddy, I am a worthless miserable nigger, 
that's what I am. I didn't deserve to have her." 

*' She said, ' Oh for one kiss, oh for one 
hug ' " 

" I'll go in to her at once.'* 

" Stop ! " says Buddy impressively. 

" Wha's the matter .? " 

*' She died day after baby was born." 

" No ! " 

" Yassir. Stone dead. Sure's I live." 

The poor hero breaks down and sobs and wails 
and howls and blubbers, distraction in his aspect, 
his knees knock together, he throws his hat in 
the dust — and all the while the audience is con- 



78 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iii 

vulsed with laughter. The Negro women in the 
stalls find their chairs too small for them and all 
but fall on to the floor ; the smartly dressed Negro 
youths in the boxes are guffawing from wide- 
opened mouths and laughing as much with their 
bodies as with their faces. 

" Mother and I went to town to buy the 
cojffin," says Buddy. " Poor old Mother ! " 

" Did Mother forgive me .? " 

" Oh yes, she forgave you all right. Such a 
mother as she was ! She knew you were bad and 
wrong and a disgrace, but she loved you, ah, 
how she loved you ! " 

" I am glad there's poor old Mother." 

" Mother and I arranged for the funeral, but 
we had to sell up the home. Yes, every stick." 

More and more grief on the part of husband. 

" I'll go in and see her anyway," says he, 
moving towards the door. 

*' Stop ! " says Buddy. 

'' Wha's the matter .? " 

'* She's dead . . . run over by a trolley-car 
as we were going to the funeral ..." and so 
on, the denouement of course being that when he 
is about to go and hang himself he catches a 
glimpse of Mother, larger if possible than life, 
and he realises it is all a hoax, and then Baby 
appears with her little baby — and all is joy. 



Of course the play par excellence for a Negro 
theatre is Othello ; or rather, for a Negro actor 
in a mixed cast. Unfortunately, no white com- 



Ill ORATORS AND ACTORS 79 

pany in the United States will allow a Negro actor 
to take even a subordinate role. Even " nigger" 
parts, humorous Negro parts, have to be taken 
by white men. An anomaly to be remedied ! 
The profession of acting is too noble a one for 
colour prejudice to lurk there. I fear, however, 
that it will be long before mixed companies of 
white and coloured actors perform on the dramatic 
stage in the United States. Othello apparently is 
seldom played, though the old tragedy of Shake- 
speare is strangely of the time and a propos. 
The tragedy of Othello exhibits the same race- 
prejudice existent in the sixteenth century as now, 
and expressing itself in similar terms. The white 
woman is not for Moors or Negroes on any terms. 
It is almost incredible that Desdemona should shun 

The wealthy curled darlings of our nation, 
... to incur a general mock, 
Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom 
Of such a thing as thou. 

He must have used an enchantment on her. 
Othello is the devil. He is a black ram. He is 
a Barbary horse : 

You'll have your nephews neigh to you; you'll 
have coursers for cousins and gennets for germans. 

There is little doubt that by Othello Shake- 
speare intended a Negro, or, in any case, some 
one whom the white denizens of New Orleans 
would call a nigger. *' Moor " or " Blackamoor " 
was the common name for Negro, and the local 
detail of the play confirms the impression of a 



8o CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iii 

thick - lipped, black - bosomed, rather repulsive "1 
physical type. The psychology of Othello is, 
moreover, that of the modern Negro. His florid 
and sentimental talk with its romantic yearning 
and its exaggerations is very characteristic : 

I spake of most disastrous chances, 
Of moving accidents by flood and field, , 

Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach, j 

Of being taken by the insolent foe i 

And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence ; 

And portance in my travels' history : 
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, 
Rough quarries, rocks and hills w^hose heads touch heaven. 
It was my hint to speak, — such wsls the process ; 
And of the Cannibals that each other eat. 
The Anthropophagi and men whose heads 
Do grow beneath their shoulders. 

And are not his last noble words, with his dramatic 
and romantic gesture, and his suicide, the noble 
African set upon a pedestal ! 

Fanny Kemble in her diary tells how John 
Quincy Adams thought " it served Desdemona 
right for marrying a * nigger,' " and she imagines 
the fine effect which some American actor in the 
role of lago might obtain by substituting for 
" I hate the Moor " " I hate the Nigger," pro- 
nounced in proper Charleston or Savannah 
fashion. " Only think," says Fanny Kemble, 
" what a very new order of interest the whole 
tragedy might receive acted from this stand- 
point and called ' Amalgamation, or the Black 
Bridal ' ! " 

The sympathy of a Southern audience would 
be almost exclusively with lago and Roderigo 



Ill ORATORS AND ACTORS 8i 

and the father. But could they tolerate it without 
a lynching ? No Negro company dare produce 
it south of the Mason-Dixon line. 

How the Negroes would perform tragedy 
in the vein of tragedy I do not know. There 
is so much tragedy in their history, in their past, 
that tliey have sought only comic relief. I 
believe the characteristic Americanism of " Keep 
smiling " or, as expressed in the song, " Smile, 
smile, smile," comes from the Negro. The 
coloured people as a whole seem to be serious 
only in church or at musical gatherings. Even 
the eloquent pastor has no easy task to gain the 
attention of his congregation. He must walk 
about and rage and flash, and with crashing 
reverberations explode the wrath of God like 
the voice of the Almighty in the storm. He 
must forget ordinary diction in forgetting him- 
self, and chant in ecstasy and rapture, lifting up 
his whole soul to the Lord. If you talk to the 
Negro he merely laughs ; you must chant to 
him to be taken seriously. In this possibly lies 
j the vein for Negro dramatic tragedy and pro- 
phetic poetry. Perhaps, however, the emotional 
appeal of such would be too strong for Whites. 

It is an ordeal for a sensitive white person 
to take part in a Negro revival or camp meet- 
ing. The emotional strain is tremendous. It 
drives one to tears or to laughter. Though it is 
difficult to move the Negro, once he is moved 
he can be rapidly brought to a frenzy which 
surely has little enough to do with the Christian 
religion. But even when he is not greatly moved 

G 



I 



82 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iii 

it is somewhat heart-searching for a white person 
present. 

One day I went in at a chapel door. The 
building was full of Negroes : every seat seemed 
taken. Perched high above the platform was 
a black woman, all in black, with a large jet 
cross on her broad bosom. She was reading from 
the First Book of Samuel in a great oracular 
voice which never rose or fell, but was like a 
pronouncement of eternal law. I was taken 
right up to the front and given a seat under 
her throne. I knew at once that there was likely 
to be an emotional storm in the audience. It 
was throbbing on the heart-strings even as I 
listened to the reading, and I wondered how I 
should combat it. After the Scripture the Lord's 
Prayer was said by a portentous Negro who had 
the frame of an African warrior. When he went 
down on his knees he shook the beams of wood 
and the seats. He prayed angrily, and clapped 
as he prayed, and interjected remarks. 

" Thy Will be done ! Yes, Lord, that's it, 
that's what we want certainly. 

" Give us this day our daily bread ! Yes, 
give us it (clap, clap, clap). Give us our daily 
bread. Lord. Feed us ! Feed us. Lord ! " 

The congregation also on all hands inter- 
jected its remarks and clapped and praised as the 
Lord's Prayer went along. 

The woman all in black was a famous mover 
of souls, and her sermon was evidently the most 
looked-for religious excitement of the morning. 
She was a plain woman with a powerful will, 



Ill ORATORS AND ACTORS 83 

a great voice, and a rare knowledge of the Bible. 
She preached from the text " Saul hid himself 
among the stuff." First she told the story in 
a quiet voice and then began to make the appli- 
cation. " It was no use hiding from God, for 
He would find you out." 

So rousing were her simple words, and such 
was the atmosphere she was begetting in the 
midst of her congregation, that I had to do 
everything in my power to avoid breaking down 
under the influence and sobbing like a child. 

I went over in my mind the drama of Macbeth, 
and reconstructed Richard the Third, and called 
to memory the speeches I had listened to at the 
Bar dinner the night before, and what I had 
been doing during the past week and month. 
But all the while I registered also in my brain 
the whole of what the black priestess was 
saying. 

Next to me a feminine voice kept crying out, 
'* Help her. Lord, help her I " and I back-pedalled 
for all I was worth. Presently the preacher was 
lifted out of the ordinary everyday voice into a 
barbaric chant, which rose and fell and acclaimed 
and declaimed in rhythmical grandeur and music. 
I dared not look at the woman at my side. But 
she now lisped out, " She's all right now, Lord, 
she's all right now," and I thought of the relief 
of the Welsh when their preachers get into the 
strain they call the hwyl. 

I then very cautiously peered round at the 
woman. What was my astonishment to see a girl 
of eighteen with a face like a huge dusky melon. 



84 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iii 

Her jaws were perfectly relaxed, her eyes half j 
shut, and her upper lip, which was raised, exposed ■ 
her smiling teeth and a layer of sweet chewing 
gum. 

Meanwhile the Reverend Norah up above was 
urging us all to come out from behind the stuff. 
We were always hiding behind our business, 
behind our families, behind our bodies — 

** They are hiding behind their bodies, O Lord ! 
Yes, O Lord, they say that they are sick, that they are 

ill. 
That they cannot do this and they cannot do that M 

because they are feeble in health, 
O come out from behind the stuff! 
You saw Saul hide behind the baggage, O Lord ; 
Our Negro brothers and sisters are hiding there to-day. 
Hiding behind their wealth — 
Hiding behind their charity — 
Hiding behind their houses and their clothes and 

their cars. 
Yes, and their wives and their husbands, 
And other people's opinions. 
But You see them, O Lord, 
You see them, and You'll bring them out — " 

" Fm hiding there right enough," broke out 
from the congregation, and " Lord, save us ! " 
" Lord, help us ! " 

The whole mass of black humanity swayed 
under the power of the emotion which the woman 
had kindled. They were about to stand in 
frenzy and give the great gospel shout of repent- 
ance, when something happened, the woman's 
strength gave way, and she slipped out of the 



I 



Ill ORATORS AND ACTORS 85 

chant back into her ordinary voice. At once 
the spell was broken. 

The tiniest tots in the congregation then came 
out carrying little jam-jars which they bore to 
each individual for his collection, ^nd we sang 
a rolling and clamorous hymn, and all went home. 

One note further in the sermon and there 
would have been a great scene of conversion 
at the close of the service, and every one would 
have decided to come out from behind his stuff, 
as the preacher recommended. But it's better 
for one's religion not to be converted every 
Sunday. 

Many white people would be so amused by 
a sermon of this kind that they would find 
difficulty in not laughing. One laugh might have 
proved calamitous, and would certainly have 
evoked hostility. On the other hand, there are 
also whites whose souls thrill to psycho-physical 
religious emotionalism. Such a type is the cele- 
brated poet and singer of his poems Vachel 
Lindsay, who wrote — 

We mourned all our terrible sins away, 

And we all found Jesus at the break of the day. 

Blessed Jesus ! 

I never met a Negro who thought religious 
hysteria humorous unless it were in some other 
sect from his own. Each different race or 
people seems to have its different characteristic 
religious expression. When one has seen the 
exaltation of Copt and Arab in religion, when 
one has heard the great choric voice of Russia 



L 



86 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iii 

at church, and the splendid purposeful faith 
of Teutonic hymns, one knows that a calm 
singing of " Praise to the Holiest in the height ! " 
is not the only mode of praise. There are fifty 
thousand ways of praising God, and every single 
one of them is right. 

So there is no call to chide the Negro for his 
excess. His ways are part of the natural and 
divine history of Man, and it is infinitely worth 
while to consider them with an open and charit- 
able mind. The hysteria, the frenzy of some 
meetings I have observed is not in the white man. 
There is no use being appalled by it. It is the 
third part which finishes the man downward, 
as St. John says in the desert. 

" But after these emotional excitements they 
commit so many murders," said a Southern 
woman to me. 

" If so, one must be upon one's guard in the 
presence of a converted man," said I. 



The foundation of the Negro's great religious 
seriousness is to be found in the Negro hymn or 
" spiritual." These spirituals were before there 
were Negro churches, before Christianity was 
actually allowed to the slaves. That is why they 
are more often called plantation melodies. They 
were sung in the twilight of the old plantations, 
and gave voice to a great human sorrow and a 
great human need. They show that the Negro 
has obtained access to the spiritual deeps, that 
he has a soul as we have — a fact so often denied — 



Ill ORATORS AND ACTORS 87 

and that he is capable of penetrating the subUme. 
I listened very often to these songs. In several 
places they were sung to honour a white visitor. 
I heard them rendered by the Hampton Singers 
and lectured upon by Harry T. Burleigh, to 
whose efforts in research the preservation of 
several are due. There is no question of the 
excellence of them. They make a great appeal 
to all people who have music in their souls. ' 

It is, however, a musical effect, not an intel- 
lectual one. The words have often little relevance 
to anything profound, and at best are childish. 
There is generally a keynote which murmurs 
through the whole of the song, the function of the 
basso profondo who provides a river of harmony 
like life itself ; and the tenors and baritones and 
the shriller voices move on this flowing base like 
ships. On the rivers the slaves loved to sing as 
they rowed their masters, using most aptly the 
beat of the oars and the swish of the water, whilst 
the man who stood at the helm and steered was 
usually the deep bass. One of the most unfor- 
gettable melodies is " O listen to the lambs ! " 
the tenors seem to imitate flocks of innumerable 
sheep and lambs all crying to one another, whilst 
the basso profondo is the irrelevance of " I want 
to go to heaven when I die " continually repeated 
in subterranean mumbling and whispers — 

O listen to the la-ambs 

All a-cry . . in. All a-cry . . in. 

An' I wan' to go to Hebn wen I die ! 

" Swing low, sweet chariot ! " " Go down, 



88 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iii 

Moses," ''Didn't hear nobody pray," "The 
walls of Jericho," and several others, are assuredly 
famous. 

These and many diverse phenomena give indi- 
cations of a distinctive Negro point of view, and 
of an incipient broad - based popular culture. 
A sympathetic study will always give evidence 
that can be set against the point of view that the 
Negro is nothing, or an animal, or a scamp at 
best, or a shame to the species. I was sitting in 
the gardens at Baltimore in the shade of a giant 
plane tree one day when out came a mixed class of 
Negro boys and girls and a young eager coloured 
master of about twenty-five. The girls were 
luxuriant " flappers " of every hue of polished 
ebony ; the boys were spindle-legged and spry 
and bullet-headed. They all examined plants 
and trees and caterpillars and flowers under the 
informing tutelage of the master. They were as 
noisy and vivacious as a flock of birds that has 
suddenly alighted on a plain. They minded no 
outsider. But a tall white man passed them, 
and I saw on his face a look of unutterable 
contempt — 

" Learning botany," said he to me in a stage 
whisper. " They'll know as much about it to- 
morrow morning as pigs." 



IV 

IN TENNESSEE 

The South, they tell me, never alters. It is said 
to be the least characteristic and most uninterest- 
ing part of the United States. " You will not 
care for it," I was told. " It has not changed 
in fifty years." It is certainly little visited. It 
does not exemplify the hustle and efficiency of 
the North. And then you cannot lecture down 
there. It is not a literary domain. The con- 
sequence is that in Great Britain many people 
confound the *' Southern States " with the 
Republics of South America. I was asked in 
letters why I had gone South. It was thought 
there must be less interest there. But that is a 
mistake. The South is as vital as the West and , 
the East. On the whole, it is more picturesque. 
It is not so diversified, but the vast areas of cotton 
on the one hand, and of sugar and corn and rice 
on the other, and the forests, present well-marked 
features and give the South a handsome natural 
aspect. It is true that the Southern point of 
view as regards the Negro does not change very 
much, and that all vote one way, but it does not 
follow that the Southern point of view as regards 

89 



90 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iv 

the whole future of the United States has not 
been modified and will not change. The South 
has been very poor and is becoming rich, will 
perhaps become very rich and prosperous. It 
was almost deprived of political power, and now 
it has, in an extraordinary way, regained political 
power. It is well known that the opinion of a 
poor and ruined man changes when Fortune makes 
up to him for the past. So also with the South. 

Then, in considering a people as a whole, one 
is bound to reckon character. Thus, in Great 
Britain, what important factors are the rugged- 
ness of Yorkshire and Lancashire, the caution of 
the Scots, the authority-loving of the Southern 
counties, the enthusiasm and imaginativeness of 
the Celts. And in America one has to reckon, 
not only with the Puritan fervour of New 
England, but with the determination and turbu- 
lence and group-instinct of the more cavalier 
spirit of the South. Though heat makes the 
Southern women languid, and the Southern men 
fiery and quick of temper, it does not seem 
to make them weaker. On the whole, the 
Southerner seems to have a stronger will than 
the Northerner, and despite the exuberance of 
North and West, and a flood of contrary ideas 
and sentiments, the Southerner remains, as it 
were, eternally incapable of being suppressed. 
As long as America speaks, the South will always 
speak. Therefore the South is very significant 
in American life. 

After Virginia, I went by rail to the neighbour- 
ing State of Tennessee. I came into Knoxville 



IV IN TENNESSEE 



91 



one Friday night. The sight of it in the moon- 
Hght was impressive — the broad railway bridge, 
the clock-tower with luminous face, the main 
street flocking with a Tennessee crowd, all shops 
fully ablaze with light, bunting and wreaths 
hung from house to house — for it was the week 
of the Fair. A Salvation Army meeting bellowed 
forth musical offerings and hallelujahs " thro' 
the flag-filled air." Everywhere electric signs 
were twinkling. Laughter and talk walked arm 
in arm along the broad main way. *' It's a 
fine city, this Knoxville of yours," I ventured to 
remark to a stranger. " No, not a fine city," 
said he, '* a fine people, but not a fine city — a 
wretched city ; it needs pulling down and re- 
building — but fine people, the finest people in the 
world." This rare self-consciousness and belief 
in self, this group-feeling, I believe, one would 
look in vain for in the North. 

" Sober Knoxville " is one of the most respon- 
sible of Southern cities. Tennessee as a whole 
is quiet and steady. Lynching is infrequent. 
It was therefore considered very extraordinary 
that a race-riot should break out in the city. 
The race-riots in Chicago and Washington in 
1919 were no doubt worse, but none caused 
more perplexity than that which broke out at 
Knoxville on August 30 of that year. 

Deplorable and terrible as were those Negro 
pogroms of the year after the war, I think they 
were due to special conditions." They were 
the expression of the frustrated ferocity that 
would otherwise have gone into the war. De- 



92 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iv 

mobilisation excitements had much to do with 
them — the parades of Negro regiments, the idle- 
ness of white troops and of the demobilised 
unemployed. When the complete transition to 
peace conditions had been achieved the danger 
of these outbreaks was averted. The year 1920 
remains freer from race-riots. That is not to 
say that they may not break out again, and on 
a larger scale. In any time of social upheaval 
and revolution they become possible. Those 
that have occurred show an ugly animus against 
the Negro still latent in the common people of 
the cities. 

As explained to me, the outbreak at Knox- 
ville seemed comparatively simple in origin. 
Mr. Maures Mayes, a Negro, murdered Mrs. 
Lindsay, a white woman. He was arrested and 
sent to a jail in another city. A mob formed 
to enter Knoxville prison and lynch the Negro. 
But a committee opened parley with the Governor, 
and was allowed to satisfy itself that the prisoner 
was not there. Apparently, however, there was 
a considerable amount of whisky stored in the 
prison. That also attracted the mob. A general 
assault was commenced, the place was stormed 
and all prisoners were released. Troops sent to 
disperse the mob joined it, and a second purpose 
then appeared — to take revenge on the coloured 
population. Some one started a rumour and it 
spread like wild-fire, — that thousands of Negroes 
were marching on the business part of the city 
and that two soldiers had been killed. The 
coloured folk were taken by surprise — there was 



IV IN TENNESSEE 93 

a great deal of looting and destruction and 
personal robbery, and a number of Negroes 
were killed whilst many were injured. It was 
the first race-riot that had ever taken place in 
Knoxville, and all reputable people were sorry 
for it. I was told it all sprang from the crime 
of one Negro. But one might just as well say 
it all sprang from a desire to have the whisky 
in the prison — O Knoxville ! O sobriety ! 

Because in general the Negroes are well 
treated in Knoxville this lapse has been dis- 
counted, and they are surprisingly free from 
bitterness. I called at the Carnegie Library 
for coloured people, a quiet little building — 
not much by comparison with the really grand 
public Hbrary of the city, but still a provision, 
and as such to be noted, in comparison with so 
many other cities where the Negroes not only 
have not access to the general public libraries, 
but have no separate provision made for them. 
The Knoxville library for coloured people was, 
I beUeve, opened by the Mayor some years ago, 
and the city felt proud of what it had done. It 
is unfortunately very inadequate, but it is in the 
charge of a capable coloured lady who will per- 
haps help to " agitate " a bigger and better one. 
The Negroes are very grateful in any case for 
what they have. 

I called on several representative Negroes. 
They were much more friendly to the Whites 
than those I found in Virginia. " We get on 
very well here," was a common remark. I 
visited the coloured lawyer H , established 



94 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iv 

in Knoxville some eight years. He was in 
deshabille and was sweeping out his office with 
a hand brush and shovel. He turned out to be 
very lawyer-like in conversation. I asked him 
a whole series of questions, to which he answered 
" Yes " or " No " without volunteering any 
information or enlarging in any way. He called 
the race-riot a " circumstance." He said he had 
won cases even in the Supreme Court, and was 
respected by the Bench for his grim determina- 
tion. After saying that, he went to the window 
and spat violently into the street below and then 
returned. 

I praised his probable skill in handling juries, 
and he was mollified. 

*' I am practised to read men's faces," said he. 
" I pick out the man who is likely to cause trouble 
and address myself exclusively to him. Judges 
here are absolutely devoid of colour prejudice." 

A seeming half-wit had just been sentenced 
to death at the city of Danville for accosting a 
white girl. The trial was of the briefest, and 
the Negro's transit to the electric chair was 
made the most rapid possible — so as to avoid a 
lynching. The lawyer thought that the sentence 
was harsh — but as long as lynching was so 
prevalent, legal punishment had to be severe. 

" Did you ever hear of a white man being 
convicted for assaulting a Negro ? " I asked. 

" No," said he constrainedly, " not unless it 
were an offence against a child." 

He did not think Negroes showed much 
enterprise in Knoxville — there were no banks. 



IV IN TENNESSEE 



95 



no large businesses, no drug stores, though there 
were four coloured lawyers and sixteen doctors. 

After Lawyer H I visited Mr. D , a 

successful coloured dentist, with well-groomed 
head and manicured hands. He was clad in a 
white hospital coat which was spotless, and by 
the appurtenances of his cabinet he seemed to 
be abreast of scientific progress as far as dentistry 
was concerned. He had a good practice, not 
only among the Blacks, but with the white 
country population. He said the old settlers had 
no prejudice against a coloured dentist, though 
the younger, newer men and women were 
different. Whilst I was talking a coloured girl 

came in to have Mr. D fill a hollow tooth. 

He said the coloured folk had suffered greatly 
with their teeth in the past, but were taking 
more care of them now. He loved putting gold 
crowns on teeth, and most smart Negro young 
men felt a little gold in the mouth was very chic 
— just the thing. It is certainly a characteristic 

of the modern Negro. Mr. D watched the 

race-riot from his office window, and was much 

alarmed at the time. But, like Lawyer H , 

he felt that there was good feeling in the city. 
He thought it had been an accident. The 
soldiers had been inflamed against the Negroes. 

In lack of Negro enterprise what a contrast 
Knoxville was to places like Norfolk, Virginia ! 
I was soon to realise that the farther South I 
went the more stagnant would Negro life show 
itself — until I reached the point where there would 
be little scope for investigation. The traveller 



96 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iv 

going South from Washington is let gradually 
downward into a sort of pit of degradation. 
Chattanooga is lower than Knoxville, Birming- 
ham lower than Chattanooga, rural Georgia and 
Alabama lower than all of these. This, I think, 
ought to be realised lest the glamour of Negro 
progress in Virginia and the North give a false 
impression of the whole. 



At Knoxville it was Fair time. The time when 
I was in the South was one of fairs and carnivals. 
As the Russian goes on pilgrimage when the 
harvest has been gathered in, so the American 
goes to the Fair in the autumn. There is in the 
South a vast network of the moving caravans of 
showmen, and a huge show business quite novel 
to an Englishman. I arrived in many towns 
at the time of their Fair, and had the greatest 
difficulty in obtaining shelter for the night, so 
crowded were they. The people from the 
country round rolled in to the Fair in their cars 
and choked every thoroughfare. 

One blemish on the large State Fair is that, 
except as servants, no Negroes are to be seen. 
There is a great gathering of white people, 
but no Blacks. It is therefore more polite, 
more well-dressed, more conventional, and there 
is less of colour and life than would fairly have 
obtained had all been welcome. What is a Fair 
if it be not an outing for the poor ! It is reduced 
to this in the South, that the Whites have their 
Fairs and the Negroes have theirs separately. 



IV IN TENNESSEE 97 

I accompanied an Appalachian sportsman. 
He told me he shot a big black bear the day 
the Armistice was signed. Sure as the first of 
November came round he was out with gun and 
haversack and Negro boys hunting the bear. 
He hunted for the love of hunting, though bear's 
flesh could be sold at a dollar a pound and was 
worth it, every cent. He thought Tennessee 
did ** mighty well " in the war, and they gave 
the boys a fine reception when they came back. 
They'd had a drop of whisky in them in the riot, 
but a few niggers less wasn't much matter. He 
f pointed out to me signs of Knoxville prosperity 
— houses that cost ten to twenty thousand dollars 
to build — picturesque and wooden, but very 
costly from a European point of view. No 
cotton was grown in this district, and next to no 
tobacco. Many people did not even know what 
a stalk of cotton was like. 

The Knoxville Fair was a wondrous exposi- 
tion of Southern hogs (each hog docketed with 
personal weight and what it gains per day), bulls 
and chickens and pigeons and rabbits and owls 
and what not, and there was a hall of automobiles 
festooned in flags. Caged lions and tigers flanked 
the auditorium of the free vaudeville entertain- 
ment. Negro boys flogged bony grunting camels 
round the grounds. The popcorn stands vied 
with the ice-cream counters stacked with cones. 
There was an astonishing uproar from the various 
revolving '' golden dreams " and of the jibbing 
metal horses ; and outside all manner of peep- 
shows — men who had sold their voices talked till 

H 



98 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iv 

they foamed at the lips or went hoarse, of the 
freaks and wonders within. Thus the two-headed 
child ; the girl who does not die though her half- 
naked body is transfixed with darts ; the *' whole 
dam family " (apes dressed up as human beings) ; 
the cigarette fiend, a thin yellow strip of humanity 
who is slowly but surely smoking himself to death ; 
Bluey, the missing link between monkey and 
man ; the fire-swallower from the South Sea 
Islands ; Zarelda, the girl with a million eyes 
(dotted all over her body) who has baffled all 
scientists ; the garden of Allah and the garden 
of lovely girls ; Leach, the human picture- 
gallery, with the world's masterpieces tattooed 
all over his body ; Dagmar, the living head 
without a body. . . . 

And the owner of the show, and of the bought 
voice which must not stop advertising it to the 
passer-by, stands at one side in shirt-sleeves, 
and rolls his quid and spits, and seems to meditate 
on dollars and cents, ever and anon signalling 
to the man with the voice not to let the crowd 
get away without coming in. It was pathetic 
to come upon the freaks, later, on the road — see 
Zarelda demurely clad in black gripping a 
suit-case, and realise that she had " dates " all 
over the South, and showed her million eyes 
to-day in Knoxville, then in Macon, then in 
Savannah, then Jacksonville and Mobile and 
New Orleans, and a score of other places, some- 
times for a day, sometimes for three days or a 
week — not in any sense a music-hall artiste, 
bu*" a sort of gipsy by life and by profession. 



IV IN TENNESSEE 99 

How tired the freaks must get, knocking about 
from State to State and listening to the loud laugh 
that speaks the vacant mind. 

One would expect as the accompaniment of 
this show -life a great number of strolling 
musicians and poor folk wandering from town 
to town. But there are practically none. Stroll- 
ing musicians now obtain polite employment 
at the many cinema houses where sensational 
pictures alternate with low vaudeville. Southern 
talent meets with a boisterous reception from the 
twenty-cent houses of Atlanta and New Orleans. 
One hears very broad humour upon occasion, 
frantic burlesques of the nervous hysteria and 
half-witted ignorance of the " nigger " — when 
the white man makes up as a Negro he always 
shows something lower than the Negro. At 
one show in New Orleans the whole audience 
roared with mirth at a competition in what was 
called *' fizzing," the spitting of chewed tobacco 
in one another's face and the bandying of purely 
Southern epithets and slang. Music is Uttle 
developed among the Whites, though the singing 
of " Dixie " choruses is hailed as almost national. 
Musical instruments are now rare, even among 
the Negroes, and seem to have been displaced 
by the gramophone. There is no " gridling," 
no beggars singing hymns on the city streets. 
In the country there are few tramps. The 
ne'er-do-wells are to be found more in the 
market-places and the cheap streets. Prohibi- 
tion has subterraneanised that part of the drink- 
traffic which it has not killed, and the hitherto 



loo CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iv 

unemployed find a congenial occupation leading 
the thirsty to the " blind tigers." ^ It is rare to 
come across a man on the road, and Vachel 
Lindsay tramping Georgia and reading his poems 
to the farmers must have been unique, not only 
as a poet, but as a tramp. I saw nothing resem- 
bling the grand procession of *' hoboes " that I 
met when tramping to Chicago seven years ago. 
Perhaps it was because immigration had ceased, 
and throughout the whole of America there was 
a need for labour which absorbed all men. Yet 
there could have been few on the road even 
before the war : the vast number of Blacks 
makes it unfitting for a white man to be tramping, 
and there is moreover less chance for a white 
man to get work in any case. 

Much is said against the " poor Whites " or 
*' poor white trash," as the white proletariat is 
called by the black proletariat. They are said 
to be the worst enemies of the Negro, and the 
Negro is afraid of Bolshevism or Socialism, 
because he knows the common white people, 
" those who have nothing and are nothing," are 
the last people likely to give him justice. As 
one of the most popular of Negro leaders said 
recently : "As long as Socialism is followed by 
the lower classes of Whites we can see there is 
more danger coming from Socialism to the 
Negro than from anything else, because below 
the Mason and Dixon line the people who lynch 
Negroes are the low-down Whites." Of course, 
those crowds who joyfully allow themselves to be 

^ The sobriquet of an illicit drinking-den. 




D 



O 

w 

H 

Q 
i2 

O 
< 

o 
o 
c 

u 






IV IN TENNESSEE loi 

photographed around the charred remains of the 
Negro they have burnt, thus affording the most 
terrible means of propaganda to Negro societies, 
are more of the dull uneducated masses than of 
the refined and rich. They hate the Negro more 
because they are thrown more in contact with 
him, and their women are more accessible to 
him. They are in competition with the Negro 
for work and wages, and would gladly welcome a 
complete exodus to the North or to Liberia, for 
then their wages would go up. Physically, and 
man for man, they are afraid of the Negro, and 
therefore they attack him in mobs. Fortunately 
there are not in the South great numbers of poor 
Whites except in the large cities and at the ports. 
By contrast with the people of the North the 
people of the South are noisy, very polite indoors, 
but brusque and rough without. They will do 
a great deal for you as a friend, but not much 
for you as a stranger. They have sharp-cut 
features, thin lips, blank brows. The women 
do not take on a fair fulness of flesh but are 
inclined to dry up and fade. There are an 
enormous number of faded women everywhere — 
a sign perhaps that the climate does not suit the 
race. The accent seems to vary with the State, 
and Tennessee speaks with far more distinction 
than Georgia, where the '' nigger brogue " pre- 
vails, and it is difficult to tell White from Black 
by voice. Nearly all " r's " are dropped. Moral 
character is said to be weak, but there is neverthe- 
less a very high standard, at least in matters of 
sex. The Southern woman is by no means as 



I02 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iv 

conscious of her charms as the Northern woman, 
and an unusually susceptible male could spend 
a quiet time in these parts. Men are not thinking 
of love and composing poems, even though it is 
the South, but they are if anything keener on 
business and money. Most people seemed sus- 
picious of strangers, not communicative, but once 
they have taken the stranger to their hearts they 
easily become warm-heartedly effusive. 

As a stranger I encountered a surprising lack 
of civility at a " non-Union " plough company 
at Chattanooga. The employes were mostly 
Negroes, and I called on the white superintendent 
to obtain permission to go over the works. A 
heavy-jowled fellow kept me waiting half an 
hour in an ante-room, and then not only refused 
point-blank to let me see conditions in his factory, 
but was so brusque in his manner that I was 
forced to give him my mind roundly on his lack 
of courtesy, not to me personally, but to a literary 
man. As a rich business man he seemed to 
consider the profession of letters as dirt under his 
feet. I must say I felt shame to be so angry, and 
I was much amused some weeks later to read in 
a Chattanooga newspaper picked up by accident 
that Billy Sunday had visited this city and had 
preached in the said works, and at the close of 
his address, the superintendent being present, all 
the employes were en bloc converted to Christ. 

Chattanooga is a larger city than Knoxville, 
better built and more spacious. One has entered 
the rayon of Southern steel and coal. Its many 
factory chimneys and its sooty sky testify to 



IV IN TENNESSEE 103. 

considerable industrialism. As in its sister city 
of Birmingham, Alabama, there are many non- 
union shops. A great steel strike was in progress 
in the United States, but whilst the workers in 
the North stood their ground in a long and bitter 
struggle there was scarcely the semblance of a 
walk-out in places like Chattanooga and Birming- 
ham. Northern Labour trouble seemed to mean 
Southern capitalistic prosperity. 

One reason why Southern labour remains to 
a great extent unorganised is the Negro difficulty. 
Unions are not ready to accept Negro member- 
ship, therefore the Negro can always be brought 
in to do the white man's work if the latter goes on 
strike. Whether Union or non-Union the wages 
seem fairly high. I talked with a Negro moulder 
who earned on an average six dollars a day. That 
is over eighteen hundred dollars American, and 
about five hundred pounds British money a year. 
A non-Union unskilled man would, however, earn 
little more tlian two dollars a day — which, with 
the cost of food so high, is very little. 

I noticed a difference in the attitude of the 
coloured population in Chattanooga. It was 
much more depressed than that of Knoxville 
or the Virginian cities. Nothing terrible had 
occurred in Chattanooga, but there was said to 
be a bad mob, and what had happened at Knox- 
ville had frightened them. The newspapers 
contained intimidating news - paragraphs. On 
September 26, at Omaha, Nebraska, the mob had 
burned down the Court House, lynched a Negro, 
and tried to lynch also the Mayor, E. P. Smith, 



I04 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iv 

who was twice hoisted to a lamp-post because 
he refused to hand over a prisoner to the mob. 
" As I stood under that lamp-post with the mob's 
rope neck-tie circling my neck and listened to 
the yells ' Lynch him,' I took the same course 
any true American would have taken," said the 
Mayor. In the face of death he refused to yield 
his authority to Judge Lynch. That was at 
Omaha in the West. On September 29 two 
Negroes were lynched by twenty-five masked 
men at Montgomery, Alabama, for alleged assault 
of a white woman. On October i the terrifying 
Colour riot broke out at Elaine, Arkansas, on 
a dispute over cotton prices. On October 6 two 
Negroes were burned at the stake and three were 
shot to death at Washington, Georgia, for sup- 
posed complicity in the murder of a deputy- 
sheriff. Next day, at Macon, Eugene Hamilton 
was lynched for attempted murder, and so on. 
Since the Civil War one could scarcely find a 
more bloody and terrible period. And the 
poor Whites of Chattanooga kept hinting that 
Chattanooga's turn would soon come. I was 
told Negroes did not care to stray far from their 
homes in the suburbs after dark. They were 
tormented and mauled on their way home from 
church. The Jim Crow portion of the trolley- 
car was invaded by roughs trying to start trouble. 
In some cities in the South the Negroes have 
all-black motor-omnibuses and jitneys running. 
These would obviate much of the danger of the 
trolley-car, which has only a straw screen between 
the races. But Negro enterprise has not risen 



IV IN TENNESSEE 



105 



to motor-omnibuses in depressed Chattanooga. 
From a White point of view, the city might be 
improved by more hght. It is a dark and exten- 
sive place. The great companies do not v^ant to 
lose their Negroes and might do more to keep 
them. I found the Negroes scared, and many 
were ready to seize the first opportunity to go 

Northward. Mr. T said, " They might 

kill us all." Mrs. W said, " All who have 

children want to go away. There'll be no 
chance for our children here. Before the war 
it was much better, but they seem to dislike us 
more now. Perhaps it would have been better 
if none of our men had gone to the war." I 
endeavoured to reassure most of those with whom 
I talked, for they had an exaggerated idea of 
their danger. 

At Chattanooga there was no library for the 
coloured people. There seemed to be little 
Negro business. I was at once introduced to 
the druggist and the undertaker. Undertaking 
and drug-selling, which includes ice-cream-soda 
dispensing, seem the most popular business enter- 
prises among the Negroes. Wherever three or 
four polite Negroes were gathered together and 
I was talking to them some one would say, 
" Permit me to introduce Undertaker So-and- 
so," and the latter would smile blandly and offer 
his brown hand. At Chattanooga I visited a 
swell establishment and looked over a show- 
room of elegant cofhns, and I was shown into the 
parlour and the embalming-room, where on a 
stone slab the bodies were prepared. This under- 



io6 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES iv 

taker had started originally with one coffin, and 
had now become, as I saw, one of the rich men 
of the city. Funerals cost between a hundred 
and a hundred-and-fifty dollars, and were usually 
defrayed by the Insurance Companies. 

I found the large East-side drug-store kept 
by a young man who had been in charge of the 
pneumonia ward of the 92nd Divisional Hospital 
in France. He had as many white customers 
as coloured. He did not sell much patent 
medicine, as he said the attitude of the United 
States Government to patent medicines had 
become most severe. He was a fully-qualified 
chemist. Doctors prescribed and he dispensed 
in the ordinary way. Yes, many were surprised 
to find a Negro chemist in a position of authority 
in a hospital, but that was due to white people's 
ignorance of the progress made by coloured 
students of medicine. 

I greatly enjoyed yoseph's Bondage^ a 
dramatic cantata sung by a coloured choir. 
Evidently the Negroes had composed the cantata 
themselves, for the verbiage was very quaint 
and simple. In a packed hall to be the only 
Whites was for myself and the lady who was 
with me a curious position. It caused a whole 
row of seats to remain empty in the midst of a 
crowded house. No Negro male dare sit down 
next to the white woman for fear of what I 
might do. However, when I left my place to 
talk to a Negro I knew in another part of the 
hall the empty line filled up mechanically. 

The production of the cantata was quite amus- 



IV IN TENNESSEE 107 

ing. Potiphar's guards were the smartest possible, 
being ex-soldiers from Pershing's army, upright 
Negro boys in khaki. But Potiphar was in blue, 
and looked like a man in charge of an elevator, 
and wore the slackest of pants. Leva, his wife, 
pawed Joseph over and yowled, " I love you, 
I love you." Pharaoh, with glistening steel 
crown and steel slippers, was impressive. Joseph 
as a slave was the Negro working-man in his 
shirt ; as Vizier, however, with the purple on 
him, he looked very grand, and the jubilee 
chorus which he sang when at length Pharaoh 
stepped down and he sat in Pharaoh's seat was 
very jolly, swaying to one side of the crowd 
around him and singing to them, swaying to the 
otlier side and singing to them, and then to all 
and God. 

I did not leave the city without attending 
Church, and I heard a little black Boanerges 
give a brilliant address. He walked up and 
down his rostrum with arms folded, and cooed 
and wheedled, but ever and anon crouching 
and exploding, lifting his hand to strike, bawling, 
even yelling to humanity and the Almighty. In 
dumb show he pulled the rope of a poor fellow 
being lynched — and sent straight to hell. He 
spoke of the race - riots, and then suddenly 
becoming breathless, as if he were a messenger 
just arrived with bad tidings, he flung both arms 
wide apart, dilated his eyeballs, and cried in a 
terrorising shriek, " There is riot and anarchy in 
the landr 

He had chosen a fine combination of texts 



io8 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES r 

for his sermon — *' Can the Ethiopian change hia 
skin or the leopard his spots ? " " That which ii 
born of the flesh is flesh and that which is bori 
of the Spirit is Spirit." 

Though a complete stranger, I was single( 
out and brought to the front to give the congre-^ 
gation a Christian greeting. I told them I had 
read in a Negro paper that " the Negro Church 
had failed. Prayer had been tried for fifty years 
and had been proved to be no use." And I said 
what I firmly believe to be true, that only 
Christianity can save Colour. 

The orator was much pleased and said to his 
congregation, " See what God has sent us this 
Sunday morning," and he invited me to give 
the address in the evening. We had an amusing 
altercation on the platform. " I do not know 
what to call him, or who he is ; he may be any- 
body, a doctor, a professor, a . . . " he looked 
at me inquiringly. 

" Oh, plain Mr.," said L 

He hung on, however, to " Professor " till I 
interrupted him again. 

At the close of my address the deacons came 
out to assess the congregation in the matter of 
collection. They looked it up and down and 
decided that twenty-two dollars was the amount 
that could be raised. So with their solemn faces 
they stared patiently at the congregation whilst 
the plates went round. The collection was 
counted, and was found to be considerably less. 
So the deacons addressed themselves once more 
to the congregation, averring that some of the 



IV IN TENNESSEE 109 

young men were holding back. Then for five 
minutes individuals were moved to come up 
singly and make additional offerings. Progress 
was reported, and then more individuals came 
up till the assessment had been realised. 

Then the most touching thing occurred. The 
pastor turned to me and offered to share the 
collection with me. 

" Oh no ! " I whispered hurriedly, feeling 
perhaps rather shocked at the idea. 

" He says ' Oh no,' " said the pastor to the 
congregation. 



V 

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 

Travelling from Chattanooga to Atlanta the 
mind inevitably reverts to the American Civil 
War, for in 1863 the victory of the North marched 
from Chattanooga and the famous battle of Look- 
out Mountain to the taking of Atlanta and the 
discomfiture of Georgia. The glorious Stars 
and Stripes, which now they make the Radicals 
kiss as a sign of loyalty even in the South, came 
victoriously out of the Northern horizon, climbed 
each hill, dipped and climbed again, with a 
clamorous exultant Northern soldiery behind it. 
General Sherman began to gather his great 
fame, whilst General Lee, the adventuresome 
Southern leader, allowed himself to be cut off 
in Virginia. The efforts of the South had been 
very picturesque, like the play of a gambler 
with small resources and enormous hopes, but 
the shades of ruin gathered about her and 
began to negative the charm of her beginnings. 
Lincoln had proclaimed the freedom of the slaves. 
The South pretended that in any case slavery 
could not survive the war, and in token of this 

she enlisted Negro soldiers, making them free- 
no 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 1 1 1 

men from the moment of enlistment. In military 
extremity policy promises much which after- 
wards ingrate security will not ratify. The 
Southern planter might have obtained some 
measure of indemnification for the loss of his 
slaves had he come to terms in time. But he 
hoped somehow he might win the right to manage 
his Negroes as he wished without interference. 
There was the same violent state of mind on the 
subject of the Negroes as slaves as there is now 
on the subject of the Negroes as freemen. All 
that was missing was the white woman talk. 
Though originally the colonists had been generally 
opposed to the introduction of slavery, yet slavery 
had taken captive and then poisoned most men's 
minds. The South chose to fight to the end 
rather than sacrifice the institution prematurely. 
There was a pride, as of Lucifer, in the Southerner 
too, a belief in himself that foredoomed him to 
be hurled into outer darkness and to fall through 
space for nine days. Sherman's army, when it 
burned Atlanta and marched through Georgia 
laying the country waste, was inspired with some- 
thing like the wrath of God. 

In order to see the ex-slave and ex-master 
to-day, it is necessary to dwell not only in cities 
but in the country, and I chose to walk across 
the State of Georgia as the best way to ascertain 
what life in the country was like. And I followed 
in the way Sherman had gone. There if any- 
where, it seemed to me, the reactions of the War 
and of Slavery must be apparent to-day. 

Sherman was something of a Prussian. He 



112 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES v 

was a capable and scientific soldier. From an 
enemy's point of view he was not a humanitarian. 
War to him was a trade of terror and blood, and 
he was logical. " You cannot qualify war in 
harsher terms than I will," said he. '* War is 
cruelty, and you cannot refine it." And when 
he had captured Atlanta he ordered the whole 
population to flee. 

If they cared to go North they would find their 
enemies not unkind. If they thought there was 
safety in the South — then let them go farther 
South to whatever protection the beaten Southern 
Army could afford. 

So North and South they fled, the people of 
Atlanta, but mostly South, for they were bitter ; and 
the roads filled with the pitiful array of thousands 
of men and women and children with their old- 
fashioned coaches, with their barrows, with their 
servants, with those faithful Blacks who still heeded 
not the fact that *' the day of liberation had ar- 
rived." All under safe conduct to Hood's army. 
What complaints, what laments, as the proud 
Southern population took the road. A lament- 
ation that is heard till now ! And when the 
people had gone the city of Atlanta was set on 
fire. Sherman had decided to march to the sea, 
and he could not afford to leave an enemy 
population in his rear, nor could he allow the 
chance that secret arsenals might exist there after 
he had gone. It was a never-to-be-forgotten 
spectacle — " the heaven one expanse of lurid 
fire, the air filled with flying burning cinders." 
" We were startled and awed," says a soldier 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 113 

who marched with the rest, '' seeing vast waves 
and sheets of flame thrusting themselves heaven- 
ward, rolling and tossing in mighty billows — a 
gigantic sea of fire." Small explosions arranged 
by the engineers were punctuated by huge 
explosions when hidden stores of ammunition 
were located ; and whilst these added ruin to 
ruin in the city, they sounded as lugubrious and 
awful detonations to the soldiery on the road. 
Depots, churches, shops, warehouses, homes, 
flared from every story and every window. 
Those who remained in the town were few, 
but it was impossible not to be stirred, if not 
appalled. A brigade of New England soldiers 
was the last to leave, and marched out by Decatur 
Street, led by the band of the 33rd Massa- 
chusetts Regiment playing 

John Brown's body lies a-mould'ring in his grave, 
His soul is marching on — 

the lurid glare of the fire gleaming upon their 
bayonets and equipment, inflaming their visages 
and their eyes, which were already burning with 
the war-faith of the North. 

That was in the Autumn of 1864. Years 
have passed and healed many wounds. Now it 
is Atlanta in the Autumn of 19 19 and the crush 
of the Fair time. All Georgia is at her capital 
city. The automobiles are forced to a walking 
pace, there are so many of them, and they vent 
their displeasure in a multiform chorus of barking, 
howling, and hooting. So great is the prosperity 
of the land that the little farmer and the working- 
man have their cars, not mere " Ford runabouts," 

I 



114 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES v 

but resplendently enamelled, capacious, smooth- 
running, swift-starting coaches where wife and 
family disport themselves more at home than 
at home. Atlanta's new life has grown from the 
old ruins and hidden them, as a young forest 
springs through the charred stumps of a forest 
fire. On each side Atlanta's sky-scrapers climb 
heavenward in severe lines, and where heaven 
should be the sky-signs twinkle. Every volt that 
can be turned into light is being used. The 
shops and the stores and the cinemas are dazzling 
to show what they are worth. The sidewalks 
are thronged with Southern youth whose hilarious 
faces and gregarious movements show a cama- 
raderie one would hardly observe in the colder 
North. Jaunty Negro boys mingle with the 
crowd and are mirthful among themselves — as 
well dressed as the Whites, sharing in the " record 
trade " and the boom of the price of the cotton. 
They are not slaves to-day, but are lifted high 
with racial pride and the consciousness of uni- 
versities and seminaries on Atlanta's hills, and 
successes in medicine, law, and business in the 
city. They roll along in the joyous freedom 
of their bodies, and make the South more 
Southern than it is. How pale and ghostlike 
the South would seem without its flocks of 
coloured children, without those many men and 
women with the sun-shadows in their faces ! 

'' We love our niggers and understand them," 
say the Whites, repeating their formula, and 
you'd think there was no racial problem what- 
ever in the South, to see the great " Gate City " 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 115 

given over to merriment unrestrained, and many 
a Negro colliding with many a white youth 
and yet never a fight — nothing on the crowded 
streets to exemplify the accepted hostility of one 
to the other. One has the thought that perhaps 
Atlanta did not burn in vain, and that the South 
as well as the North believes in the immortality 
of the soul of John Brown. 

The tobacco - chewing, smiling, guffawing 
crowds of the street, and Peachtree Street jammed 
with people and cars ! What a hubbub the four 
jammed-up processions of automobiles are mak- 
ing — like choruses of hoarse katydids crying 
only for repetition's sake and the lust of noise ! 
But there is more noise and more joy still a- 
coming ! Skirling and shrieking, in strange 
contrast to the Negroes and to the clothed Whites 
and to the colour of Night itself, comes the parade 
of college youths, all in their pyjamas and night- 
shirts. Long queues of some hundreds of lads 
in white shouting at the top of their voices — 
they climb in and out of the electric cars, rush 
into shops and theatres in a wild game of *' Follow 
my leader " — '"'rah, rah^ rah^'' they cry, " rah^ rah, 
rah,'' and rush into hotels, circle the foyer, and 
plunge among the amazed diners in the dining- 
rooms, thread their way around tables and up 
the hotel balustrade, invade bedrooms, go out at 
windows and down fire-escapes, and tlien once 
more file along the packed streets amidst autos 
and cars, raving all the while with pleasure and 
excitement. It is good-humour and boister- 
ousness and the jollity of the Fair time. Up 



ii6 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES v 

above all the flags and the bunting wave listlessly 
in the night air. It seems impossible but that 
the firing of Atlanta is forgotten, and the pitiful 
exodus of its humiliated people — forgotten also 
the exultancy of the soldiers of the North singing 
whilst the city burned. 

Sherman with 60,000 men and 2500 waggons 
but only 60 guns marched out, and none knew 
what his destination was. A retreat from Adanta 
comparable only to Napoleon's retreat from 
Moscow was about to commence. The hostile 
farming populadon of Georgia and the Carolinas il 
should harass the Yankee army as the Russian J| 
peasants had done the French in 18 12. That 
was the Southern belief and the substance of \ 
Southern propaganda at the time. Not so the 
Northern army, which had the consciousness of 
victory and a radiant behef in its cause and in 
its general. " A feeling of exhilaration seemed ! 
to pervade all minds, a feehng of something to I 
come, vague and undefined, still full of venture i 
and intense interest. Even the common soldiers 
caught the inspiration, and many a group called 
out, * Uncle Billy, I guess Grant is waidng 
for us at Richmond' — the general sentiment 
was that we were marching for Richmond and 
that there we should end the' war, but how and 
when they seemed to care not, nor did they 
measure the distance, or count the cost in life, 
or bother their brains about the great rivers 
to be crossed and the food required for man and 
beast that had to be gathered by the way." ^ 

^ Sherman's Memoirs. 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 117 

Sherman himself had not decided on what 
point exactly he would march. But he never 
intended to march against Lee at Richmond, 
though the South and his own soldiers believed it. 
He always designed to reach the sea and reopen 
maritime communication with the North, and 
kept in mind Savannah, Port Royal, and even 
Pensacola in North Florida. So universal was 
the belief that he was marching on Richmond 
by way of Augusta that in all the country districts 
of Georgia where the left wing marched they 
will tell you still that the enemy was marching 
on Augusta. 

" Tou shall maintain discipline, patience, and 
courage^^ said Sherman to his army, " and I 
will lead you to achievements equal to any of the 
past. We are commencing a long and difficult 
march to a new base, but all the chances oj war have 
been provided Jor. The habitual order oj march 
will be by four roads as nearly parallel as possible. 
The columns will start habitually at 7 A.M. and 
make about 15 miles a day. The army will forage 
liberally on the country during the march. Horses, 
mules, and waggons belonging to the inhabitants may 
be appropriated by the cavalry and artillery freely 
and without limit, discriminating however between 
the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor 
and industrious, usually neutral or friendly. All 
foragers will refrain from abusive or threatening 
language, and they will endeavour to leave each 
family reasonable means of sustenance. Negroes 
who are able-bodied and serviceable may be taken 
along if supplies permit. All non-combatants and 



ii8 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES v 

rejugees should go to the rear and be discouraged 
from encumbering us. Some other time we may be 
able to provide jor the poor Whites and Blacks 
seeking to escape the bondage under which they 
are now sujffering. To corps commanders alone is 
entrusted the power to destroy mills^ houses, cotton- 
gins, etc., but the measure oj the inhabitants^ 
hostility should be the measure oj the ruin which 
commanders should enjorce.^'' ^ 

There was much more said in those very finely 
written and emphatic orders, but the sentence 
that captured the imagination of the common 
soldier was certainly " the army will forage 
liberally on the country," which at once became 
a common gag among the men. For it spelt 
loot and fun and treasure-trove and souvenirs 
and everything else that stirs a soldier's mind. 
There is a human note throughout the whole of 
General Sherman's orders, but no softness, rather 
an inexorable sternness. He had no patience 
with the cause of the rebels nor with their ways 
of fighting. He and his staff were not averse 
from the idea of reading the population of 
Georgia and South Carolina a terrible lesson. 
Whilst the march was military it inevitably 
became punitive. The cotton was destroyed, 
the farms pillaged, the slaves set free, the land 
laid waste. It was over a comparatively narrow 
strip of country, but Sherman was like the wrath 
of the Lord descending upon it. 

So out marched the four divisions (14th, 15th, 

^ Field Orders, 119 and 120, abbreviated. 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 119 

17th, and 20th), joyously singing as they went 
the soldiers' songs of the war : 

One and Free, 

and 

He who first the Flag would lower, 
SHOOT HIM ON THE SPOT, 

and all manner of variants of "John Brown" to 
the Glory Hallelujah chorus. 

The way out from Atlanta is now a road 
of cheap shops and Jewish pawnbrokers, Negro 
beauty-parlours, bag-shops, gaudy cinema and 
vaudeville sheds, fruit-stalls and booths of quack 
doctors and magic-healers, vendors of the Devil's 
corn -cure, fortune-tellers, and what not. A 
Negro sky-scraper climbs upward. It is de- 
cidedly a " coloured neighbourhood," and rough 
crowds of Negro labourers and poor Whites 
frolic through the litter of the street. Painfully 
the electric cars sound their alarms and budge 
and stop, and budge again, threading their way 
through the masses, glad to get clear after half 
a mile of it and then plunge into the comparative 
spaciousness of villadom outside the city. 

It is not as it was of yore. Where the bloody 
July battle of Atlanta raged a complete peace 
has now settled down amid the dignified habita- 
tions of the rich. Trees hide the view, and children 
play upon the lawns of pleasant houses whilst the 
older folk rock to and fro upon the chairs of 
shady verandahs. 

Dignified Decatur dwells on its hill by the 



I20 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES v 

wayside, and has reared its pale monument to 
the Confederate dead. On this white obehsk the 
cause of the South is justified. Within sight of 
it rises an impressive Court House, which by its 
size and grandeur protests the strength of the law 
in a county of Georgia. 

There was a gloomy sky with lowering clouds, 
and a warm clammy atmosphere as if the air had 
been steamed overnight and was now cooling 
a little. The road leaving behind Decatur and 
the suburbs of Atlanta became deep red, almost 
scarlet in hue, and ran between broad fields of 
cotton where every pod was bursting and puffing 
out in cotton-wool. Men with high spindle- 
wheeled vehicles came with cotton-bales done up 
in rough hempen netting. Hooded buggies 
rolled sedately past with spectacled Negroes and 
their wives. Commercial travellers in Ford cars 
tooted and raced through the mud. Thus to 
Ingleside, where a turn in the road reveals the 
huge hump of Stone Mountain, shadowy and 
mystical like uncleft Eildons. All the soldiers 
as they bivouacked there or marched past on 
that bright November day of '64 remarked the 
mountain, and their gaze was turned to it in the 
spirit of curiosity and adventure. 

I fell in with a Mr. McCaulay who was a 
child when Sherman marched through. He 
thought the Germans in Belgium hardly equalled 
Sherman. Not only did his troops burn Atlanta 
but almost every house in the country. He 
pointed out new houses that had sprung up on 
the ruins of former habitations : 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 121 

" A fence used to run right along here, and 
there were crops growing. No, not cotton ; 
there was not the demand for cotton in those 
days, and not nearly so much grown in the State. 
Over on that side of the road there was a huge 
encampment of soldiers, and I remember stealing 
out to it to listen to the band. 

*' The foragers came to the houses and took 
every bit of food — left us bone dry of food. 
They also took our horses and our mules and our 
cows and our chickens. Sometimes a family 
would have a yoke of oxen hidden in the wood, 
but that would be all that they had. Every one 
had to flee, and all were destitute. It was a 
terrible time. But we all stood by one another 
and shared one another's sorrows and helped 
one another as we could. 

" All coloured folk also stood by us. I 
expect you've read Uncle Toms Cabin and The 
Leopard's Spots, but the picture is terribly over- 
drawn there." 

" I did not know these told the story of the 
march," said I. 

" They do not. But they give an account of 
the Negroes that is entirely misleading. The 
North has queered the Negro situation by sending 
all manner of people down here to stir the Negro 
up against us, till we said, ' You and your 
niggers can go to the Devil ' — and we left them 
alone. 

'* But that was a mistake, and we are realising 
it now, and intend to take charge of the education 
of the Negro ourselves, and be responsible for 



122 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES v 

him spiritually as well as physically. There 
never was a better relationship between us than 
there is now. 

" And I — I was brought up among them as 
a child as an equal, played with them, wallowed 
with them in the dirt, slept with them. They're 
as near to me as flesh and blood can be.'* 

It was curious to receive this outpouring when 
I had not mentioned the Negro to him at all, 
and seemed merely curious concerning Sherman's 
march. It is, however, characteristic of the 
South : the subject of the treatment of the Negro 
recurs like idee fixe. 

At Lithonia, after a meal of large yellow yams 
and corn and chicken and biscuits and cane syrup, 
I called on old Mrs. Johnson who lived over the 
way from Mrs. Jones. Lithonia was much visited 
by the cavalry. Decatur was stripped of every- 
thing, and Lithonia fared as badly in the end. 
Men came into the farmyard and there and 
then killed the hogs and threw them on to waiting 
waggons. These were foragers from the camps 
outside Atlanta. But one day some one came 
with the news — " Sherman has set fire to the great 
city and he'll be here to-morrow." And sure 
enough on the morrow his army began to appear 
on the road — the vanguard, and after that there 
seemed no end to the procession. The army 
was all day marching past with its commissariat- 
waggons and its water-waggons, its horses, its 
mules, and regiment after regiment. The de- 
spoiled farm-wives and old folk could not help 
being thrilled, though they were enemies. 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 123 

General Slocum, who commanded the left wing 
of the army, wrote his name in pencil on Granny's 
doorpost when he stopped at her house with one 
or two of his staff. 

The Confederate soldiers were "Johnny Rebs " 
and the Union soldiers were '* Billy Yanks." 
Neither side was known to have committed any 
crimes against women or children, and the latter 
were crazy to watch the Yanks go by, though 
often their fathers were away in the hard-pressed 
Rebel armies. 

As I walked along the red road betwixt the 
fluffy cotton -fields from village to village and 
from mansion to mansion, those stately farm- 
houses of the South, I was always on the look- 
out for the oldest folk along the way. The young 
ones knew only of the war that was just past, 
the middle-aged thought of the old Civil War 
as somewhat of a joke, but the only thing the 
old folk will never laugh over is the great strife 
which with its before and after made the very 
passion of their lives. So whenever I saw an 
old man or woman sitting on a verandah by the 
wayside I made bold to approach and ask what 
they knew of the great march, and how it had 
affected them, and the Negroes. 

They told of the methodical destruction of 
the railways, and of the innumerable bonfires 
whose flames and smokes changed the look of 
the sky. Every rail-tie or sleeper was riven from 
its bed of earth and burned, and the long steel 
rails were heated over the fires. To make the 
fires bigger timber was brought from the woods. 



124 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES v 

and every rail was first made red-hot and then 
twisted out of shape — the favourite plan being 
for three or four soldiers to take the hot rail 
from the fire, place it between two trunks of 
standing pines, and then push till it was bent 
nigh double. 

They told of the stillness after the army had 
gone, and of the sense of ruin which was upon 
them with their cotton destroyed, and all their 
stores for the winter pillaged, and their live-stock 
driven off. An old dame told me how the only 
live animal in her neighbourhood was a broken- 
down army horse left behind to die by the 
enemy. The folk were starving, but a woman 
resuscitated the horse and went off with him to 
try and bring food to the village. She walked 
by his side for fear he would drop down dead — 
and first of all she sought a little corn for the horse, 
for '' Old Yank," as she called him. Many a 
weary mile they walked together, only to find 
that " Sherman's bummers " had been there 
before her. She slept the night in a Negro 
hut (a thing no white woman would dream of 
doing now), and the Negroes fed her and gave 
corn to the horse and sent her on her way. Out 
of several old buggies and derelict wheels a 
" contrapshun " had been rigged out and tied 
to the old horse, but it was not until beyond 
Covington and Conyers that a place was found 
which the foragers had missed, and the strange 
buggy was loaded for home. 

I spent a night in Conyers in beautiful country, 
and was away early next morning on the Coving- 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 125 

ton road. The road was shadowy and sanguine. 
The heavy gossamer mist which closed out the 
view of the hills clothed me also with white rime. 
Warm listless airs stole through the mist. On 
my right, away over to the heaviness of the mist 
curtain, was a sea of dark-green spotted and 
flecked with white ; on my left was the wretched 
single track of the railway to Covington rebuilt 
on the old levels where it was destroyed in '64. 
Wooden carts full to the rim with picked cotton 
rolled clumsily along the red ruts of the road, 
and jolly-looking Negroes sprawled on the top 
as on broad, old-fashioned, cottage feather-beds. 
And ever and anon there overtook me the 
inevitable ** speed merchants," hooting and growl- 
ing and racketing from one side to the other of 
the broken way. I sat down on a stone in an 
old wayside cemetery, sun-bleached and yet hoary 
also with mist. Such places have a strange 
fascination, and I knew some of those who lay 
beneath the turf had lain unwitting also when 
the army went by. What old-fashioned names — 
Sophronias and Simeons and Claramonds and 
Nancies ! On most of the graves was the gate 
of heaven and a crown, and on some were 
inscribed virtues, whilst on one was written, 
" He belonged to the Baptist Church." The 
oldest stones had all fallen and been washed 
over with red mud. Amongst the old were 
graves of slaves, I was told, but since the 
war no Black had been buried with the 
White. 

An old Negro in cotton rags, grizzled white 



126 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES v 

hair on his black weather-beaten face, told me 
where the coloured folk lay buried half a mile 
away, where he too would lay down his old back 
and rest from cotton-picking at last. " But on 
de day ob Judgment dere be no two camps," 
said he. " No . . . sir . . . only black and 
white souls." He remembered the joy-night 
and the jubilation after the army passed through, 
and how all the coloured boys danced and sang 
to be free, and then the disillusion and the famine 
and the misery that followed. The old fellow 
was a cotton-picker, and had a large cotton bag 
like a pillow-case slung from his shoulders — 
an antediluvian piece of Adamite material with 
only God and cotton and Massa and the Bible for 
his world. 

Whilst sitting on this wayside stone I have the 
feeling that Sherman's army has marched past 
me. It has gone over the hill and out of view. 
It has marched away to Milledgeville and Millen 
and Ebenezer and Savannah, and not stopped 
there. It has gone on and on till it begins 
marching into the earth itself. For all that are 
left of Sherman's warriors are stepping inward 
into the quietness of earth to-day. 

The mist lifts a little, and the hot sun streams 
through. The crickets, content that it is no 
longer twilight, have ceased chirping, and ex- 
quisite butterflies, like living flames, are on the 
wing. It is a beautiful part of the way, and where 
there is a sunken disused road by the side of the 
new one I take it for preference, for probably 
it was along that the soldiers went. Now young 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 127 

pines are springing from their footsteps in the 
sand. 

Here no cars have ever sped, and for a 
long while no foot has trod. The surface is 
smooth and unfooted like the sea-shore when the 
tide has ebbed away, and bright flowers greet 
the wanderer from unfarmed banks and gullies. 
So to Almon, where an old gaffer told me how 
he and some farm - lads with shot - guns had 
determined they would *' get " Sherman when 
he came riding past with his staff, and how they 
hid behind a bush, where the Methodist church 
is now standing, and let fly. Sherman they 
missed, but hit some one else, and they fled to 
the woods. He lost both his hat and his gun 
in the chase which followed, but nevertheless 
got away. Not that I believed in its entirety 
the old man's story. It was his pet story, told 
for fifty years, and had become true for him. 
I came into Covington, a regular provincial 
town, whose chief feature is its large sandy 
square about which range its shops with their 
scanty wares. There I met another old man, a 
captain who served under Lee, and indeed 
surrendered with him. He had been beside 
Stonewall Jackson when the latter died. He 
was now eighty-four years, haunting the Flowers 
Hotel. 

" This world's a mighty empty place, believe 
me," said he. " Eighty-four years . . . ! " 
He seemed appalled at his own age. 
" Threescore and ten is the allotted span . . . 
At seventeen I went gold-digging . . . seeking 



128 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES v 

gold ... it was the first rush of the digging 
mania in California, but I only got six hundred 
dollars' worth." 

At seventeen years many their fortunes seek, 
But at fourscore it is too late a week, 

said I sotto voce. 

" A mighty empty place," repeated the old 
captain, rocking his chair in the dusk. '* Yes, 
Sherman marched through here. He burned all 
the cotton in the barns. I was born here, and 
lived here mos' all my life, but I was with Lee 
then. That war ought never to have been. 
No, sir. It was all a mistake. We thought 
Abraham Lincoln the devil incarnate, but knew 
afterwards he was a good friend to the South. 
It's all forgotten now. We bear the North no 
grudge except about the niggers " 

He interrupted himself to greet a pretty girl 
passing by, and he seemed offended if any 
woman passed without smiling up at him. But 
when he resumed conversation with me he 
reverted to " The world's getting to be a mighty 
empty place . . . eighty-four years . . . three- 
score and ten is the allotted span, but . . ." 

I turn, therefore, to the witness of the time, 
and the genius who conceived the march and 
watched his soldiers go. Thus Sherman wrote 
of Covington : " We passed through the hand- 
some town of Covington, the soldiers closing 
up their ranks, the colour-bearers unfurling 
their flags, and the bands striking up patriotic 
airs. The white people came out of their houses 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 129 

to behold the sight, spite of their deep hatred 
of the invaders, and the Negroes were simply- 
frantic with joy. Whenever they heard my name 
they clustered about my horse, shouted and prayed 
in their peculiar style which had a natural 
eloquence that would have moved a stone. I 
have witnessed hundreds, if not thousands of 
such scenes, and can see now a poor girl in the 
very ecstasy of the Methodist ' shout,' hugging 
the banner of one of the regiments and jumping 
to the 'feet of Jesus.' ... I walked up to a 
plantation-house close by, where were assembled 
many Negroes, among them an old grey-haired 
man of as fine a head as I ever saw. I asked him 
if he understood about the war and its progress. 
He said he did ; that he had been looking for 
the ' Angel of the Lord ' ever since he was knee- 
high, and though we professed to be fighting 
for the Union he supposed that slavery was the 
cause, and that our success was to be his freedom." 
That was the characteristic Negro point of view 
— the expectation of the " coming of the Lord," 
the coming of the angel of deliverance. Their 
only lore was the Bible, and their especial guide 
was the Old Testament. Despite all talk of their 
masters, talk which would have been dismissed as 
"eye-wash" in the war of 19 18, they believed 
that God had sent to rescue them. They awaited 
the miraculous. Sherman was God's messenger. 
So the glorious sixty thousand broke into 
quiet Georgia — carrying salvation to the sea — 
in an ever memorable way. The foe, stupefied 
by defeat, was massing on the one hand at 

K 



130 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES v 

Augusta and on the other at Macon, bluffed on 
the left and on the right, whilst in the centre 
the unprobed purpose of the General reigned in 
secret but supreme. 



The twentieth corps on the extreme left 
went by Madison, giving colour to a proposed 
attack on Augusta. The fifteenth feinted at 
Macon, the cavalry galloping right up to that 
city and inviting a sortie. The seventeenth 
corps was in close support of the fifteenth, and 
the fourteenth kept in the centre. It was the 
route of the fourteenth that I decided to follow, , 
and it was also the way along which went Sherman I 
himself. It was generally understood by the . 
fourteenth corps that Milledgeville was its object | 
at the end of a week's marching. The order of ' 
march for the morrow was issued overnight by . 
army -commanders to corps - commanders and l 
then passed on to all ranks. The men slept 
in the open, and beside watch-fires which burned , 
all night. Outposts and sentries kept guard, j 
though there were few alarms. The warm 
Southern night with never a touch of frost, even 
in November, passed over the sleeping army. 
Reveille was early, commonly at four o'clock, 
when the last watch of the night was relieved. 
The unwanted clarion shrilled through men's 
slumbers, blown by urgent drummer-boys. The 
bugles of the morning sounded, and then slowly 
but unmistakably the whole camp began to 
rouse from its stertorousness, and one man here, 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 131 

another there, would start up to stir the smoulder- 
ing embers of the fires and make them all begin 
to blaze ; and then began the hubbub of cleaning 
and the hubbub of cooking, the neighing of 
horses, the clatter of waggon-packing and harness- 
ing. R^veill^ was made easier by the prospects 
of wonderful breakfasts — not mere army rations, 
the bully and hard-tack of a later war, but all 
that a rich countryside could be made to pro- 
vide — " potatoes frying nicely in a well-larded 
pan, the chicken roasting delicately on the red- 
hot coals, the grateful fumes of coffee," says one 
chronicler of the time ; fried slices of turkey, 
roast pig, sweet yams, sorghum syrup and corn 
fortified the soldier for the day's march. Horses 
and mules also fared astonishingly well, and amid 
braying and neighing and pawing huge quanti- 
ties of fodder were provided. Then once more 
insistent bugles called ; knapsacks and equipment 
were strapped on, the horses and mules were put 
in the traces, the huge droves of cattle were 
marshalled into the road, and the army, with 
its officers and sergeants and waggons and guns 
and pontoons and impedimenta of every kind 
(did not Sherman always carry two of every- 
thing ?), moved on. 

There was something about the aspect of the 
army on the march that was like a great moving 
show. The musical composition of Marching 
thro Georgia has caught it : 

Hurrah ! Hurrah ! We bring the Jubilee ! 
All hail the flag, the flag which sets you free ! 
So we brought salvation from Atlanta to the Sea, 
When we were marching thro' Georgia. 



132 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES a 

The clangour of brass, the braying of mules, th( 
shouts of the soldiers, the ecstasy of the Negroes, 
and then the proud starry flag of the Union ! 



The procession has all long since gone by, 
and men speak of the famous deeds " as half- 
forgotten things." It is a quiet road over the 
hill and down into the vale with never a soldier 
or a bugle-horn. Cotton, cotton, cotton, and 
cotton-pickers and tiny cabins, and then maize 
stalks, corn from which long since the fruit has 
been cut, now withered, warped, shrunken, half- 
fallen in every attitude of old age and despair. 
It is a diversified country of hill and dale, with 
occasionally a huge grey wooden mansion with' 
broad verandah running round, and massive 
columns supporting overhanging roof. The 
columns, which are veritable pine trunks just 
trimmed and planed or sawn, give quite a 
classical air to the Southern home. Sometimes 
there will be seven or eight of these sun-bleached 
columns on the frontage of a house, and the first 
impression is one of stone or marble. 

The Southern white man builds large, has 
great joy in his home, and would love to live on 
a grand scale with an army of retainers. The 
Negro landowner does not imitate him, and 
builds a less impressive type of home, neither 
so large nor so inviting. Rich coloured farmers 
are, however, infrequent. The mass of the Negro 
population is of the labouring class, and even those 
who rent land and farm it for themselves are very 



^ MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 133 

30or and sunk in economic bondage. Their 
louses are mostly one - roomed wooden arks, 
nere windowless sheds resting on four stones, 
1 stone at each corner. Furniture, if any, was of 
1 rudimentary kind. " See how they live," said 
a youth to me, ''just like animals, and that's all 
they are." 

" Why don't you have any windows ? " I 
asked of a girl sitting on the floor of her cabin. 

" They jus' doan make 'em with windows," 
she replied. " But we've got a window in this 
side." 

" Yes, but without glass." 

" Ah no, no glass." 

" Is it cold in winter ? " 

'* Yes, mighty cold." 

Some cabins were poverty-stricken in the 
extreme. But in others there were victrolas^ and 
in cases where the merest amenities of life were 
lacking you would find a ramshackle Ford car. 
On the road Negroes with cars were almost as 
common as white men, and some Negroes drove 
very furiously and sometimes very skilfully. 
There were no foot-passengers on the road. I 
went all the way to Milled geville before I fell 
in with a man on foot going a mile to a farm. 
The current Americanism, Dont walk ij you can 
ride^ seemed to have been changed into Dont 
stir jorth till you can get a lift^ and white men 
picked up Negroes and Negroes white men 
without prejudice, but with an accepted under- 
standing of use and wont. I was looked upon 
with some doubt, and scanned from hurrying 



134 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES 

cars with puzzlement. Lonely Jasper Counts 
had not seen my like before. But saying " Gooc; 
day ! " and '' How d'ye do ? " convinced mos 
that the strange foot- traveller was an hones 
Christian. Lifts were readily proffered by mer 
going the same way. Those who whirled past th( 
other way may have reflected that since I waj 
on foot I must have lost my car somewhere. 

A common question put to me was, " Whai 
are you selling ? " and people were a little dumb- 
founded when I said I was following in Sherman's 
footsteps. That had not occurred to them as 
a likely occupation on a hot afternoon. I 
felt rather like a modern Rip Van Winkle whc 
had overslept reveille by half a century and was 
trying in vain to catch up with the army which 
had long since turned the dusty corner of the 
road. Still, the Southerners were surprisingly 
friendly. They said they knew nothing about 
it themselves, and then took me to the old folk 
who remembered. The old folk quavered forth, 
" It's a long long time ago now." It interested 
them always that I had been in the German war 
and had marched to the Rhine, and they were full 
of questions about that. " Oh, but this war was 
not a patch on that one," they said. " I tell 
them they don't know what war is yet — what 
we suffered then, what ruin there was, how we 
had to work and toil and roughen our white 
hands, and eat the bread of bitterness like 
Cain." 

After the Civil War the initial struggle of 
the settlers and pioneers in the founding of the 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 135 

colony had to be repeated. Every one had to 
set to and work. The help of the Negroes was 
at first diminished or entirely cut off. Even the 
necessary tools were lacking. Nevertlieless there 
was now a surprising absence of bitterness. *' The 
war had to be. Slavery was bad for the South, 
and it took the war to end it," was an opinion in 
all men's mouths. " When President McKinley 
said that the character of Robert E. Lee was the 
common inheritance of both North and South 
he healed the division the war had made," I 
heard some one say. Even of Sherman, though 
there were bitter memories of him, there were 
not a few ready to testify to his humaneness — 
for instance, this from a poor store-keeper : 

'' I suppose you're not old enough to remember 
the Civil War ? " 

" 'Deed, sir, I do." 

" Do you remember Sherman's march ? " 

'* Yes. I was only a child, but it made a 
powerful impression on me. My father was 
killed in tlie war. And we were scared to death 
when we heard Sherman was coming. But he 
never did me any harm. An officer came up, 
asked where my father was, learned he was dead. 
And he made all the soldiers march past the 
house, waited till the last one had gone, then 
saluted and left us. Captain Kelly was his name, 
and I shall never forget his face, it was all slashed 
about with old scars. He was a brave man, 
I'm sure. . . . No, they didn't do much harm 
hereabout, except to those who had a lot of 
slaves or to those who had treated their niggers 



136 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES v 

badly. If they found out that a man had been 
ill-treating his niggers they stripped his house 
and left him with not a thing." 

On the other hand the rich, the owners of 
large plantations, remained in many cases still 
virulent. 

" I know Sherman is in hell," said a Mr. 

R of historic family. ** When my mother 

lay sick in bed the soldiers came and set fire to 
our cotton-gin and all our barns. They came 
upon us like a tribe of Indians and burst into 
every room, ransacking the place for jewellery 
and valuable property. I was a small boy at the 
time, but I shall never forget it. They took the 
bungs from all our barrels and let the syrup 
run to waste in the yard because they themselves 
wanted no more of it. They killed our hogs 
and our cows before our eyes and threw the meat 
to the niggers. Yes, sir. A year or so back 
Sherman's son said he was going to make a tour 
along the way his Daddy had gone — to see what 
a wonderful thing his Daddy had done. Lucky 
for him he changed his mind. We'd 'a strung 
him to a pole, sure." 

Such sharp feeling was, however, certainly 
exceptional. Near Eatonton was a Mr. Lynch 
of Lynchburg, storekeeper, postmaster, wheel- 
wright, and blacksmith all in one. He averred 
that they were " hugging and kissing the Yankees 
now, just as they would be hugging and kissing 
the Germans in a few years." 

" There's mean fellows on every side," said 
he. " You don't tell me that there's no mean 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 137 

fellows among the English, the French, and the 
Italians. I don't believe all the stories about 
the Germans. I remember what they used to 
say about the Yankees. They get mighty mad 
with me when I tell 'em, but there's plenty of 
mean fellows on both sides." 

The village was named after the old man's 
grandfather — an Irish settler. It is just beside 
the old Eaton ton factory which Sherman burned 
down. At the next turn in the road there is a 
roaring as of many waters. A screen of pine 
and rank green undergrowth hides an impressive 
sight. A step inward takes you to the romantic 
stone foundations of the old factory ; you can 
climb up on one of the pillars and look out. 
The interior of the factory is all young trees 
and moss and tangles of evergreen, but beyond 
it rushes a mighty stream over a partially- 
dammed broad course, red as blood, but wal- 
lowing forward in creamy billows and white 
foam. 

The factory was used to weave coarse cotton 
cloth, and had evidently been worked by water 
power. Quite forgotten now, unvisited, it was 
yet a picturesque memorial of the march, and 
I was surprised to see no names of visitors scrawled 
on the walls of its massive old foundations. 

I walked into Eatonton by a long and 
picturesque wooden bridge over the crimson 
river, a strange and wonderful structure com- 
pletely roofed, and shady as a tunnel. The 
evening sun blazed on the old wood and on the 
red tide and on the greenery beyond, making 



138 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES v 

the scene look like a coloured illustration of a 
child's tale. 

Eatonton, where Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox 
were actually born, is now a hustling " city " 
with bales of cotton-fluff higgledy-piggledy down 
its streets, and again beautiful bales of extra 
quality in the windows of its cotton-brokers. 
There are also modern mills where cotton is 
being spun. The business men on the streets 
talk of " spots " and " futures " — spot cotton 
being apparently that which you have on 
the spot and can sell now, and futures being 
crops yet to be picked, which, presuming 
on kind Providence, may be sold and re-sold 
many times before being grown. What is said 
of Eatonton may be said of Milled geville, twenty 
miles farther on. It is a cotton town. It is a 
gracious seat as well, with a scent of history about 
its old buildings, but it impresses one as a great 
cotton centre. The streets of Milledgeville were 
almost blocked with cotton bales. It would 
have been easy to fight a battle of barricades 
there. The principal church looked as if it 
were fortified with cotton bales, and it would 
have been possible to walk fifty or a hundred 
yards stepping on the tops of the bales. Bales 
were on the tidy lawns of shady villas or stacked 
on the verandahs, and everywhere the hard- 
working gins were roaring and grinding as they 
tore out the cotton-seed from the white fluff and 
left cotton that could be spun. Wisps of cotton 
lint blew about all over the streets, and cotton 
was entangled in dogs' fur and children's hair. 



V MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA 139 

In the porches of Negro cabins it was heaped 
high till the entrance to the doorway itself was 
blocked. 

Cotton was booming at Savannah and New 
Orleans, and despite talk of the weevil destroy- 
ing the pod, and of bad weather and bad crops, 
it was clear that Georgia was very prosperous. 
Men and women discussed the price of cotton 
as they might horse-races or State-lottery results 
or raffles. Every one wanted room to store his 
cotton and hold it till the maximum price was 
reached. My impression of Georgia now w^as 
that it was not nearly so rich in live-stock and in 
food as it had been in the time of Sherman. In 
his day it grew its own food and was the supply 
source of two armies. To-day it imports the 
greater part of its food. It sells its cotton and 
buys food from the more agricultural States of 
the South. It might have been thought to be a 
land overflowing with fruit and honey and milk, 
but fruit and honey are cheaper in New York 
than there, and there is no margin of milk to 
give away. Meat is scarce and dear. There 
is no plenty on the table unless it be of sweet 
potatoes. I imagine that after Sherman's raid 
the farmers felt discouraged, and decided never 
to be in a position to feed an enemy army again. 
There are many always urging the Georgian 
to grow corn and raise stock, and so make Georgia 
economically independent, but the farmer always 
meets the suggestion with the statement that 
cotton gives the largest return on any given out- 
lay and takes least trouble. That is true, but it 



I40 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES v 

is largely because the Negro cotton-picker is 
such a cheap labouring hand. A farm-labourer 
would automatically obtain more than a cotton- 
picker. The hypnotic effect of the slave past 
is strong and binding upon the Negroes. Per- 
haps it is still the curse of Georgia. There are 
still planters who drive their labourers with the 
whip and the gun — though the shortage of labour 
during the war caused these to be put up. It is 
not in money in the bank that one must reckon 
true prosperity. However, in this material way, 
Georgia has quite recovered from the Civil 
War. But she has lost a good many of the 
compensations of true agriculture ; cotton is so 
commercial a product that there is no glamour 
about it, not even about the old plantations unless 
it be that of the patient melancholy of the cotton- 
pickers. 



VI 

TRAMPING TO THE SEA 

I PASSED through two ancient capitals of Georgia, 
first Milled geville, and then Louisville. The 
relationship which Milledgeville bore to Atlanta 
reminded me of the relationship of the old 
Cossack capital of the Don country to the 
modern industrial wilderness of South Russia 
called Rostof-on-the-Don. But business is busi- 
ness, and there is only business in this land. Even 
along the way to the old capital it is always so 
many miles to Goldstein's on the mile-posts 
instead of so many miles to Milledgeville. 

The old legislature sat at Milledgeville, but 
it fled at the approach of Sherman. It was a 
day of great astonishment when General Slocum 
paused in his supposed march upon Augusta and 
General Howard in his attack on Macon, and 
one came south from Madison whilst the other 
marched north from McDonough. There was 
an extraordinary sauve qui pent. Panic seized 
the politicians and the rich gentry of the place — 
for the rumour of the terrible ways of the foragers 
was flying ahead of the Union army. Every one 
strove to carry off or hide his treasures. They 

141 



142 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vi 

must have had terrible privations and some 
adventures on the road trying to race the army, 
and they would have done better to remain 
to face the music, for no private effects were 
destroyed in this city. Similar scenes were 
enacted as at Covington. The darkies made a 
great day of jubilee, and hugged and kissed the 
soldiers who had set them free. The cotton 
was burned and made a great flare — seventeen 
hundred bales of it even in those days. The 
depots, magazines, arsenals, and factories were 
blown up. Governor Brown had fled with all 
his furniture, and Sherman in the Governor's 
house slept on a roll of army blankets on the 
bare floor. 

There are many signs of ease and refinement 
in the spacious streets of Milled geville, though 
it has increased little in size since the war. It 
has large schools for the training of cadets and 
the training of girls. These are model institu- 
tions and are very valuable in Georgia. The 
place, however, seemed to lack the cultural 
significance it ought to have. But it is true 
that churches and Sunday-schools were full. 
No shops of any kind were open on Sundays ; 
the people had forgotten the taste of alcoholic 
drink and were ready to crusade against tobacco. 
They are not given to lynching, though they 
allowed some wild men from Atlanta to break 
open their jail some years ago and take away a 
Jew and hang him. But they are too content. 
At church on Sunday morning the pastor com- 
plained that whilst all were willing to give money 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA 143 

to God none were willing to offer themselves. 
He invited any who were ready to give them- 
selves unreservedly to God to step forth, and 
none did. And it was an eloquent appeal by a 
capable orator. I met an old recluse who was at 
the back of the church. He had tried to give 
himself to God, but was now living at the asylum 
where he had found shelter, being otherwise 
without means. He had been a Baptist minister 
at a church near Stone Mountain, but rheuma- 
tism had intervened after twenty years' work, 
and he could no longer stoop to immerse the 
candidates for baptism. He was an Englishman 
who had listened to Carlyle's and Ruskin's 
lectures, and he talked of Dean Farrar's sermons 
and the good deeds of the Earl of Shaftesbury. 
He spoke as no one speaks to-day, good old 
measured Victorian English. He was a touching 
type of the despised and rejected. He loved 
talking to the Negro children in the " coloured " 
school till the townsfolk warned him against it. 
His books form the nucleus of the town library, 
but the rats have gnawed all the bindings of 
his Encyclopaedia Britanntca^ and I formed the 

opinion that poor R living on sufferance in 

the lunatic asylum was probably the best-read 
man in Milled geville. 



It is a delightful walk to Sandersville, over 
Buffalo Creek, and over many streams crossed 
by the most fragile of bridges, apparently never 
properly rebuilt since Wlieeler's cavalry destroyed 



144 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vi 

them in the face of the oncoming army. Georgia 
used to have many excellent bridges, but it 
never really hindered the Yankee army by 
destroying them. It seems rather characteristic 
of the psychology of the people that they would 
not replace what they had had to destroy. Now 
at the foot of each long hill down which 
the automobiles tear is a trap of mere planks 
and gaps which chatters, and indeed roars, 
when passed over. Many motorists get into 
the mud. 

Sandersville is a busy town hung in gloomy 
bunting, which no one has had time to take 
down since the last county fair. It has a large, 
dusty, sandy square with a clock-tower in the 
middle. There are great numbers of cars and 
lorries parked around. Cotton bales, old and 
new, fresh and decayed, lie on every street. 
Huge gins are working, and Negroes are busy 
shovelling oily-looking cotton-seed into barns ; 
cotton-fluff is all over the roadways in little clots ; 
every man is in his shirt ; the soda bars do a great 
trade even in November. A stranger said to me, 
'* Come and have a drink," and we went in and 
had a '* cherry dope." There is an impressive- 
looking public library, much larger than at 
Milled geville, with high frontal columns of 
unadorned old bricks mortared and laid in 
diamond fashion, a barred door, and an entrance 
so deep in cotton-fluff, brick-dust, and refuse 
that one might be pardoned for assuming that 
learning was not now in repute. On the other 
hand, there is a fine well-kept cemetery with 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA 145 

large mausoleums for the rich and tiny stones 
for the poor. 

Sandersville was the scene of one or two com- 
bats during the war. But when it is borne in 
mind that only a hundred of Sherman's army 
died from all causes on its march to the sea, it 
will be understood that the strife was not serious. 
Sherman has been called a Prussian, and he 
certainly possessed military genius and under- 
stood soldiering as a mental science, but he 
always tried to save his men. He wished to 
win victories with the smallest possible loss of 
men, and he thought out his unorthodox plans 
of campaign with that in view. He could have 
lost half his army on this adventurous march 
to the sea. It was a most daring exploit, and 
if it had failed the whole responsibility would 
have been laid at Sherman's door. But Sherman 
had thought the matter out, and he completely 
deceived his enemy. Once more after Milledge- 
ville Slocum is seen to be threatening Augusta 
in the north and Howard is striking south. 
The cavalry is driving the enemy ahead and 
plunges northward to Louisville and Waynes- 
boro' well on the way to Augusta. The enemy 
evacuates the central regions of Georgia, and 
Sherman's infantry moves through unscathed. 
Foraging has become organised and systematic. 
The waggons amount to many thousands, and 
it is curious that the population did not destroy 
all vehicles and so prevent the army from carry- 
ing away so much. The doubt which General 
Sherman expressed at the beginning of the 

L 



146 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vi 

march that supplies might prove inadequate 
has entirely vanished, and the army has a crowd 
of Negro camp - followers almost as big as 
itself. These eventually became a great hind- 
rance, but they were evidently encouraged to 
join themselves to the soldiers in the Milled ge- 
ville and Sandersville district. They proved 
invaluable helps in the seeking out of hidden 
treasure and the pillaging of farm-houses. They 
knew the likely spots where valuables would be 
buried, and the soldiers knew how to worm out 
secrets even from the most faithful black servants 
on the big estates. One reason why Georgia 
burns and hangs more Negroes than any other 
State is probably because of the bitterness caused 
by the unstinted foraging and the " setting of 
the niggers against us," as they say. 

Be that as it may, the seeds of future hate are 
always sown in present wars, and '* Sherman's 
bummers " in their quest of spoil took little 
heed of any future reckoning. The Negroes 
led the soldiers even to the deepest recesses of 
swamps or forests, and showed the hollow tree 
or cave or hole where lay deposited the precious 
family plate and jewellery and money and even 
clothing. It was common to take from the 
planter not only hams, flour, meal, yams, sorghum 
molasses, and above all things turkeys, so rare 
to-day along the line of Sherman's march — 

How the turkeys gobbled which our commissaries found, 
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground, 
When we were marching thro' Georgia ! 

But the bummer did not stick at these. He 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA 147 

would borrow grandfather's dress-coat and hat 
surviving from the old Colonial days, and his 

1 mate would array himself in grandmother's 
finery, and so attired would drive their waggon 
back to camp, hailed by the jests of the whole 
army ; and if they met an officer on the way 
they would cry out mirthfully the text of the 
Army order — The Army will j or age liberally on 
the country. 

It is said that no forager would ever sell any 
of his loot, that, indeed, it was a point of honour 
not to sell. The veterans of the North must 
therefore preserve many interesting mementoes 
of the South. Both officers and men took many 

j tokens. There used to be an amusing euphemism 
current in Sherman's army : it was — " A South- 
ern lady gave me that for saving her house from 

j being burned " — and if any one said, " That's 
a nice gold watch ; where did you get it t " the 
soldier replied, " Oh, a Southern lady gave it to 
me, etc." 

The army made camp by three o'clock every 
day, and it was after three that most of the un- 
authorised foraging expeditions took place. They 
were gay afternoons spent in singing and gamb- 
ling, athletics and cock-fighting. The South 
was found to be possessed of a wonderful race of 
fighting cocks. The enthusiasts of the sport 
rushed from farmyard to farmyard for astonished 
chanticleer, and having captured him fed him 
well and brought him up to a more martial type 
of life than that which in domesticated bliss he 
had enjoyed with his hens. Every company 



148 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vi 

had its cock-fighting tournament. Each regi- 
ment, each brigade, each division, and indeed 
each corps, had its champion. The winners of 
many bloody frays were soon nicknamed " Bill 
Sherman " or *' Johnny Logan," but the losing 
bird which began to fear to face its adversary 
would be hailed as Beauregard or Jeff Davis. 
The cock-fight finals were of as great interest 
as the combat of the base-ball teams to-day, 
and perhaps more real. 

Besides game-cocks each regiment had a 
great number of pets. These were mostly poor 
homeless creatures on which the soldier had 
taken pity : dogs, singing-birds, kids, which 
followed with the army and had the army's 
tenderness lavished on them. 

So they went, marching and camping by 
old Louisville and the broad waters of the Ogee- 
chee down to Millen. The old farmers say what 
an impressive sight it was to watch them go by 
on the Millen road with seemingly more waggons 
than men, with all the waggons bulging with 
spoil and drawn by well-fed horses and mules, 
with long droves of cattle, and thousands of 
frenzied Negroes so frantic with joy that they 
seemed to have lost their heads and to be expect- 
ing the end of the world. 



Davisboro' is a dust-swept settlement two 
sides of a road at the foot of a hill. Doors stand 
open, and the general stores in all their disorder 
spread their wares. At one end of the little town 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA 149 

a large gin is hard at work steaming and blowing, 
ravishing cotton-seed from cotton-fluff, and many 
bales are waiting. Louisville, the old capital, 
is a dozen miles farther on beyond the woods 
and swamps of a sparsely-settled country. It is 
now " the slowest town in Georgia." It is, 
however, none the less pleasant for that. 

There are many old houses, and in the midst 
of the way stands the original wooden " Slave 
Market," built in 1758, according to a notice 
affixed, but now used as a fire-station. In the 
old colonial days when Louisville was capital, 
slaves used to be brought there in large batches 
on market days. There was a little platform 
on which the all-but-naked victims had to 
stand and be exhibited and auctioned. As I 
sat on a bench and considered the building a 
young townsman joined himself to me and gave 
me a gleeful description of the slaves — *' Their 
front teeth were filed, they spoke no English ; 
when they saw our big green grasshoppers they 
ran after them and caught them and ate them. 
The men wore loin-cloths and the women cotton 
chemises half-way to the knee. Lots of cows, 
hogs, mules, and niggers were put up and sold 
as cattle in a lump. Animals, that's all they 

were and all they are now " And he laughed 

in a curious self-conscious way. 

" It is strange to think of the history of them," 
said I, " from the African wastes to the slave- 
ship, from the slave-ship to the harbours of the 
New World, then to these market-places and to 
the plantations, taught baby-English and hymn- 



I50 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vi 

singing, obtaining the Bible as an only and all- 
comprehending book, petted and fondled like 
wonderful strays from the forest in many families, 
tortured in others, becoming eventually a bone 
of fierce political contention though innocent 
themselves, the cause of a great war, and then 
released in that war and given the full rights of 
white American citizens." 

The young townsman's imagination was not 
touched by the romance of the Negro. He was 
full of the wrong done to the white South by 
putting it under the dominance of a free Negro 
majority. 

*' You know we lynch them down here," 
said he, with a smile. '* They want social 
equality, but they are not going to get it. The 
nigger can't progress any further." 

" Well, there's a vast difference between the 
Negro of i860 and the Negro of to-day," said 
L " Hundreds of universities and colleges have 
arisen, thousands of schools and Negro organi- 
sations for self-education. The Negro has gone 
a long way since in yelling crowds he followed 
the banners of Sherman. I do not think he is 
going to stop short, and I wonder where he is 
going to and where at last he will arrive." 



I passed through Eatonton, the birthplace of 
Joel Chandler Harris, on my way to the sea. He 
taught us much about the Negro. In England 
Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit have become as 
cherished as the toys of the nursery. I think 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA 151 

Uncle Remus meant as much to us as Uncle Tom's 
Cabin. The genial point of view and the genial 
books do as much to help humanity as the strong 
and bitter ones. Both certainly have their place. 
Uncle Tom's Cabin stirred people out of a lazy 
attitude of mind towards the Negro slaves, but 
in America it aggravated a bitterness which no 
other book has been able to allay. The very 
intensity of the white man's thought about the 
Negro bodes ill for the future. The white 
men of the North deliberately have made the 
effort to rear a Negro intelligentsia. The idealists 
of the North said, " You shall go on " ; others said, 
'* No, you shall stay as you were " ; the clash 
of two wills lit up racial war, but the Negro has 
sided with the idealists who sought to raise him, 
with the Friends of Pennsylvania and the humani- 
tarians of New England. 



In the panic of Sherman's approach the planters 
and their wives told their slaves that the Yank^ 
would flog them and burn them or put them 
in the front of the battle, and drown the women 
and children in the Ogeechee or the Chatta- 
hoochee. Many believed and fled with their 
masters ; others hid in the woods, but tlie 
rumour of salvation was on the lips of most. 
The Southern has a saying, '* The nigger is the 
greatest Union in the country." News indeed 
travels faster among slaves and servants than 
among employers and masters. There was not 
much hesitation when the Army arrived. The 



152 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vi 

Negroes saw and believed. The incredulous 
were converted and the scared persuaded out 
of their hiding-places. All with one accord 
forgot their fear and then went to the other 
extreme, that is, as far in credulity as their dull 
minds had lodged in incredulity. The arrival 
of the victors gave rise to the most extravagant 
hopes. The Negro had never reasoned about 
anything in an informed way. He knew nothing 
of the world except the simplicity of the planta- 
tion. He had on the one hand slavery, and on 
the other the vague and vast idealism of Christian 
hymns ; the melancholy of bondage and the 
emotionalism of Evangelical religion. He did 
not think of New York, London, Paris, St. 
Petersburg, of the working-men's movement, 
of free thought, of political economy, but only 
of *' de ole plantation," and then " de ribber." 
From drab slavery he looked straight to Jordan 
and the golden gates, and to a no-work, easy- 
going Paradise happy as the day is long, with 
God as Massa, and Mary and the Son to play 
with. There were no between-stages to which 
to aspire. They expected, as did the Puritan 
churches about them, the huge combustion of the 
Last Day, and they did not set much store by 
this world. Hence their exalted state of mind 
following Sherman's army. They were ready to 
shout Glory when the world was a-fire, and they 
displayed all the emotion which should have 
been saved for the coming of the Lord. 

At first Sherman's army was quite pleased, 
and encouraged the emotion of the freed men. 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA 153 

But it got to be too much for the Yankee soldiers, 
who felt at last that the Blacks were overdoing 
it and that in any case they were a nuisance. 
The nearer they got to Savannah the more 
impatient did they become. At last they began 
to destroy bridges between themselves and the 
Negroes, and put rivers between them. Then, 
after leaving Millen for the pine forests of the 
Savannah shore they deliberately destroyed the 
bridge over Ebenezer Creek. There was a 
wild panic, a stampede, and many, it is said, 
were drowned in the stream. The splendour of 
the army went by, the brass bands, the cheering 
and the singing of the soldiers and the standard- 
bearers of the Nortli in the midst of them, the 
waggons, the many waggons laden with spoil, 
and the droves of cattle. But for Georgia and 
the Negro tliere set in the twilight of ruin and 
disillusion. 

Rural Georgia is not very much better off 
to-day than it v/as in slavery days. The large 
tracts of land which the Blacks thought would 
be given them they neither could nor would 
farm. They lacked experience and initiative. 
They could be too easily deceived by their white 
neighbours, and were too subservient to their 
erstwhile masters to make good in the race of 
human individuals striving one against another. 

*' No Negroes own land hereabout," said some 
Negro renters to me between Shady Dale and 
Eatonton. " They did, but got into debt and 
lost it. We rent a thirty-acre farm and pay 
two bales of cotton rent." At the current price 



154 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vi 

of cotton, 38 cents a pound, that amounted to 
380 dollars in American currency, or ^^95 in 
British currency, but the tenants paid in cotton, 
and as cotton boomed their rents advanced. 

It seemed to be everywhere customary to 
reckon rent in cotton bales, and it is easy to see 
what an economic serf the Negro can become 
under such terms. This system, known as 
" truck " in England, was long since abolished 
with us, but its evils were so notorious that truck 
has remained a proverbial expression for chicane 
— hence our phrase, " to have no truck with it." 
The Negro is better off as a labourer on a 
white man's plantation than he is when having 
the responsibility of picking a crop for master 
before he picks one for himself. There are 
many features of life on the modern plantation, 
be it of sugar or cotton, which suggest slavery. 
Virtual slavery is called peonage^ and many 
examples were given me by Negroes. It is 
arranged in some places that the Negro handles 
as little money as possible. Instead of money 
he has credit checks, metal or cardboard discs, 
which he can use at the general store to purchase 
his provisions. He is kept in debt so that he 
can never get out, and so lives with a halter 
round his neck. Especially during the war, 
when the rumour of war-wages was tempting 
the coloured labour of the South to migrate 
North in huge numbers, efforts were made to 
keep the Negro without the means of straying 
from the locality where the labour of his hands 
was the foundation of the life of the community. 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA 



'SS 



Other forms of peonage prevalent in rural parts 
is the commuting of punishment for forced- 
labour, the hiring-out of penal labour to com- 
panies or public authorities. This resembles the 
use made of prisoners during the recent world- 
war, and is virtual slavery. 

All inroads made on the liberty of the sub- 
ject might fittingly be classed as peonage- — the 
denial of the vote to those legally enfranchised, 
intimidatior^ by Lynch law, etc. 

I talked with an old Negro after leaving 
Louisville and tramping south toward Midville. 
He was lolling in rags on his porch — very near 
white. His father had been his black mother's 
white master. He remembered Sherman's pass- 
ing when he was a boy. A remarkably intelli- 
gent and tragic face, where an unhappy white 
man looked out on the misery of abject poverty 
and quasi-bondage. Cotton had proved bad 
this year. The boll-weevil had entered the pod 
early. There were but three or four bales to 
the plough. He did not know how he'd foot 
his bills. The rations given him in the Spring 
had become exhausted. He had also hoped to 
buy clothes. He said the traders came early in 
the year and supplied him with all sorts of things 
on the strength of a large cotton crop, and he 
pointed to a toy bicycle lying upside down in 
the grass. He let his little boy stride it, and 
mother thought it fine. Last year God had 
blessed them with a very fine crop, and why 
should He not be as kind this year .'' So he signed 
on for the toy bicycle and for a gramophone as 



156 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vi 

well. Now he complained that they were cut- 
ting off his rations, mother lay ill a-bed, the 
weather was getting cold, and they had no 
clothes. The boss was coming presently to 
turn them out of the cabin altogether, and they 
did not know where to go. Even while we were 
talking two bullet-headed young fellows, clean- 
shaven, frank, and surly, came up in an auto- 
mobile, stopped short, and rated the old man 
from where they sat in the car. The cabin 
and the little cotton plantation belonged to 
them now, and the old fellow was reverting 
from small proprietor to be labourer on a planta- 
tion, and to be labourer was little better than to 
be slave. 

" We have to let down rope-ladders to our 
people to get them up here," said a coloured 
Dean of a University to me. '* We live in such 
abysses down below, and there is no regular way 
out of the pit." 

I felt as I was marching into Georgia as if I 
were descending the rope-ladder. What a con- 
trast there was between the bright radiant-faced 
girls at Atlanta studying science and languages 
and those whom I was meeting now. There was 
a regular sequence or gradation going downward 
to filth and serfdom. The first bathed twice a 
day, and spent hours working " anti-kink " not 
only into their hair but into their souls and minds. 
They were fresh and fit and happy as morning 
itself. That was on the Atlanta heights. I 
stepped down to the world of business with its 
heavier, gloomier types, the hard-faced skilful 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA 157 

and acquisitive doctors, the fire - delivering, 
shadowy-minded clergy, the excited and eager 
yet heavy-footed politicians. I took the road 
and met the troubled landowners, pathetically 
happy to exist, though drowning in mortgage 
and debt ; from them I passed to the farm- 
labourers with the jowl of the savage, matted 
hair, bent backs, deformed with joyless toil, 
exuding poisonous perspiration and foul odour, 
herded like cattle or worse, nearer to the beast 
than our domestic animals, feared by women 
and weak men, as beasts are feared when they 
come in the likeness of human beings. 

There were, however, steps lower still in the 
ladder which leads downward from the Atlanta 
hills. Frequently along the road I saw men 
in yellow-striped overalls, plodding together, 
working together, overlooked by a white man 
with a gun, and as they walked sounded the 
pitiful clank-clank of the chains. It is rather 
curious, kandali in Siberia are an atrocity, but 
in sections of the United States they are quite 
natural. 

" We do not keep 'em in jail, but make 'em 
work," says the white man knowingly. '' When 
there's much work to do on the roads we soon 
find the labour." At Springfield I remarked the 
terrible state of disrepair of the highway and 
public buildings. The reason was that instead 
of setting their criminals to work on them they 
handed them over to the State authorities. 
Other towns knew better. But in the chain- 
gang and the striped convict so easily obtained 



158 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vi 

at the Courts the ex-slave was seen at his worst, 
and the rope-ladder stopped short before touch- 
ing bottom. 

There is not much to endear the ordinary- 
wooden cabins in which the mass of America's 
black peasantry is found to live. They are 
poorer and barer than the average you would see 
in Russia. Ex-serf has fared better than ex- 
slave. However, one detail of charm on this 
Georgian way was the putting up of tiny stars 
as a sign of boys serving in the army, a humble 
star of hope and glory like some tiny flower 
blossoming out of season in the wilds — one 
white star for a boy in the army, a golden one 
for a boy who had died. In their submerged 
way the Negroes were proud of having helped 
in the war. The glory, or the idea, or the parrot- 
cry of " making the world safe for democracy " 
had penetrated even into the most obscure 
abodes. The poor Negro had discovered Europe 
at last, and was especially in love with one 
nation — the French. The South generally had 
not been very eager to see the Negro in the war, 
and has not reacted sympathetically to the black 
man's war-glory. 

" There's no managing the neegahs now, 
they's got so biggety since the war," said a 
white woman at Shadydale. " Las' year we 
white people jus' had to pick the cotton usselves, 
men, women, and chillen." She told me she 
did not think it a bit nice of the French girls 
to walk out with Negro soldiers, and then told 
a story of a French bride brought home by 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA 159 

one of the white boys. She tittered. *' Yeh . . . 
she had twins soon af she came, and would 
you b'Ueve it, they were neegahs. Of course 
he sent her right back." The French intimacy 
with the Negro soldiers has cooled the South- 
erner's regard for the best-loved nation of Europe. 
It has also stirred up the racial fear concerning 
Negroes and white women. Because the black 
soldier was a favourite of the white girls in France, 
it is thought that his eye roves more readily to 
the pure womanhood of the Soutli. 

Lynching seems often to be due to Puritanical 
fervour, and is compatible with a type of religi- 
osity. Mob feeling against love is very dangerous. 
A pastor kisses a girl of his congregation, a deacon 
happens to see it, and his career is ended. An 
old man on the road volunteered the fact that 
he had never " sinned " with a woman, black 
or white, his whole life. Certainly tliere is a 
high standard of righteousness. Family life is 
pure, and love-making is not the chief interest 
in life as in some European countries. Men's 
minds are more on their business, and women's 
on their homes. I am tempted to think that if 
the white race which inhabits the South were 
French or Russian or Polish or Greek there 
would be no lynchings. The great number of 
mixed relationships would beget tolerance for 
inter-racial attraction. I said to a young Floridan 
going through in his car, *' I can well imagine 
a certain type of European woman ogling the 
Negro, making eyes at him and luring him to his 
destruction. Have you ever come across such 



i6o CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vi 

a type ? " He answered, " No, and if there were, 
we'd do away with her too." 

Of course this rigidly moral point of view 
falls away when it is a matter of the white man 
and the black girl or the mulatto. The morality 
of the Negro woman was badly undermined in 
slavery days, when slave children were bred 
without any thought of sin or shame. But 
though the moral standard has been low, it is 
nothing like so low as it was. Pride of race has 
been born, and the moral purity of the coloured 
woman as a whole is now comparatively higher. 
Certainly even in the country districts where the 
Negro is nearest to his old state of being a 
chattel, there is a great decrease in the number 
of half-bred children. The solution of the racial 
problem by ultimate blending of colour is not 
one which seems likely to succeed here in the 
course of Nature. Black and white are far 
more separate and distinct in freedom than they 
were in slavery. Even the black mammy is 
dying out. There are not so many of that type 
of coloured woman. The white mother, more- 
over, has more scruple against giving her child 
away from her own breast. The Southern 
woman is as much against promiscuous relation- 
ships with Negro women as her man-folk is 
against the Negro's roving eyes. One woman 
said, " You can understand the fondness of our 
young men for some of the Negro girls when as 
babies they were suckled by a Negro woman." 
There is much psychological truth in that. 

During these weeks on the roads of Georgia 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA i6i 

three Negroes were burned in my neighbourhood, 
two near Savannah for supposed compHcity in 
the murder of a deputy-sheriff, and a mob 
of about a thousand white men took pleasure 
in the auto-da-fi, A short while later near 
Macon a Negro was accused of making love to a 
woman of fifty as she was coming home from 
church one Sunday evening. Some one certainly 
attacked her, though what was his object might 
be questionable. The accused man fled for his 
life. He was captured at midnight by certain 
well-known citizens whose names were published 
in the Press. The sheriff argued with a crowd 
of about four hundred in the public street for 
about an hour and a half, and then, like Pilate, 
washed his hands of the matter and let the mob 
have its way. Paul Brooker, the Negro, lay 
on the ground maltreated, but living ; gasolene 
was poured over him, a lighted match was applied, 
and he was burned to death. This was not in 
Catholic Spain in the days of the Inquisition, 
but in religious Georgia, solid for Wilson and 
the League of Nations. I was told I could not 
understand why such things had to be done. 
No Englishman and no Northerner could ever 
penetrate the secret of it. That seemed to put 
me in the wrong when conversing with the 
Southern people. It was a curious fact, however, 
that they also for their part took no pains to 
understand how such things made the blood 
boil in the veins of one who lived elsewhere. It 
was not the execution nor the crime but the 
cruelty that seemed to me unforgivable. I 

M 



1 62 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vi 

could understand killing the Negro, but I could 
not and would not care to understand the state 
of mind of the four hundred who enjoyed his 
torments. 

Burnings and hangings and mob-violence of 
other kinds are frequent in most of the States 
of the South, but even in such cases where the 
names of citizens are given in the Press no pro- 
secution or inquiry seems to follow. Thus the 
great flag is flouted, and it is possible to imagine 
the cynical mirth with which the ecstasy of the 
Negroes following the Army of Liberation in 
1864 might be compared with the hilarity of the 
Southern mob in 1920 watching the ex-slave 
slowly burning to death on their accusation and 
yelling for mercy when there was no merciful 
ear to hear. 



I suppose nothing begets hate so readily as 
cruelty. That is why in all wars there is so much 
mongering of atrocities : one side tries to find 
out all the cruelties and barbarities committed 
by the other just to stir up its own adherents. 
So in the Civil War all the brutalities of the 
slave-owners were made known, and the Northern 
soldier's blood boiled because of them. Although 
the quarrel is now healed there was at the time 
a deep hate of the Southerners in the war. It 
was not only a martial conflict but personal 
hatred and contempt. What was done to the 
Blacks was aggravated by what was done to the 
white prisoners. The North discovered a cruelty 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA 163 

and callousness in the South which must have 
been a puzzle to those who reflected that they 
were of the same race. For Georgia is pre- 
dominantly English by extraction, and still 
proud, as I found, of grandfathers and great- 
grandfathers born in the old country. Some 
ascribe the change of temperament to the hot 
sun and to the southern latitude ; more, to the 
brutalising influences of slavery itself. 

When I was at Millen, which once in the glare 
of a burning railroad swarmed with Sherman's 
troopers, I went out to the old Southern battery 
at Lawton and saw the mounds and the fields 
where the pen of Northern prisoners was kept. 
It is waving with grass or corn to-day, and there 
is a beautiful crystal spring in the midst of serene 
untroubled Nature. Here the prisoners were 
concentrated in a space of ground three hundred 
feet square, enclosed in a stockade and without 
covering, exposed to all kinds of weather. When 
any escaped they were chased with bloodhounds. 
Some seven hundred and fifty died whilst in 
this concentration camp. No wonder a soldier 
of the time wrote : *' It fevered the blood of 
our brave boys. . . . God certainly will visit 
the authors of all this crime with a terrible 
judgement." 

Sherman's soldiers destroyed every hound 
they could find in Georgia as they passed through 
— so strongly did they resent the barbarity of 
hunting men with dogs. For the South had 
learned to hunt runaway slaves with bloodhounds, 
and it was a type of hunting which gave a peculiar 



1 64 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vi 

satisfaction to the lust of cruelty. What they 
learned in the maltreatment of their slaves they 
could put into practice against the prisoners they 
obtained. There again, however, the war has 
failed to bear fruit ; for the hunting of Negroes 
with bloodhounds has become common once more. 
The Northern soldiers did not become gentler 
to the Southern population as they advanced 
farther into the depths of the country. Rather 
the reverse. They would have been even more 
destructive than before had they not found the 
country to be more and more sparsely settled. 
The march from Millen to Savannah would have 
resulted in the harshest treatment of the people, 
but happily the way lay through forests and 
through the uncultivated wildernesses of Nature 
herself. The army had only its prisoners to 
vent its displeasure upon, and they certainly did 
not pet the few hundred Confederate soldiers 
and " civilian personages " whom they had 
collected in bondage. The enemy was found to 
have mined the road at one point. An officer 
of the Union army had his leg blown off. Eight- 
inch shells had been buried in the sand with 
friction matches to explode them when trodden 
on. Sherman was very angry, and called it 
murder, not war, in a way which reminds one of 
the indignation caused when in the late war the 
Germans started anything novel. The answer 
to this mining of the road was to make the 
rebel prisoners march ahead of the column in 
close formation so as to explode any more which 
might be laid on the way. They were greatly 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA 165 

afraid, and begged hard to be let ofF — much to 
the mirth of the supposed victims. It was 
not until nearing one of the forts of Savannah 
that another mine exploded — the hurt done to 
tlie prisoners remains unrecorded. 



The way is eastward to Sylvania and the 
Savannah river, and then south to the rice-fields 
and the harbour. The road is deep in sand, and 
on each side is uncleared country with high yellow 
reeds below and lofty pines above. Persimmons, 
ripe and yellow, grow by the wayside, a luscious 
fruit, good when just rotten and full of softness 
and sun-heat. Large bird-like butterflies grace- 
fully flitting down the long corridors between 
the pines, and myriads of jumping mantises 
and grasshoppers suggest that it is not November. 
The golden foliage of an occasional beech reminds 
you that it is. The woods are deep and gloomy 
and melancholy. A poorer population lives by 
pitch-boiling and lumbering. Every pine tree 
is bearded with lichen. Moss hangs in long 
festoons from the branches. The great dark 
trunks are here and there silvered with congealed 
floods of sap. Trenches two inches deep have 
been cut in the wood, and tin gutters and pots 
have been fixed up to collect the resin. Every 
other tree has a brown pot tied to it, and each 
pot is half-full of the pearly liquid life of the 
trees. You emerge from the forest to the pretty 
clearing of Rincom with a Lutheran church 
which has a metal swan above the spire — symbol 



1 66 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vi 

of the fact that the first congregation, the one 
that built the church, had come across the water 
from Europe. Six miles from Rincom is the 
oldest church in all this part of Georgia, the 
Ebenezer Chapel, founded by those first German 
settlers who sailed up the Savannah River and in 
part founded the colony of Georgia. It also is 
a church of the swan. The forest is very dense, 
and Negroes with shot-guns are potting at wild 
birds from the highway. Wayside cottages and 
churches seem almost overcome with the tillandsia, 
a sub-tropical mossy growth that seems to grow 
downward rather than upward. There is a 
slight clearing and a cemetery in the depth of 
the forest, and the hundreds of pines and cypresses 
and oaks about it are weeping with this hanging 
moss. The county is that of Effingham. Spring- 
field, the capital, without electric light, deep in 
yellow sand, with a great public square where 
all the many trees look like weeping willows 
because of this grey-green tillandsia hair trailing 
and waving ten or twenty feet to a tress, is an 
obscure town. Guide-posts for Florida begin 
to appear, and heavy touring cars roll past on the 
way to Miami and Palm Beach. There are some 
charming wooden churches — the Negro ones 
being poorer, looking better sacrifices unto God 
than those of the Whites. But above the counter 
in the chief store is written : 

In God we trust. 
All others pay cash. 

The sound of the axe clashes in the woods. 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA 167 

There are many fallen trunks on which it is 
possible to sit down and rest. Sea mist rolls 
in from the Atlantic, and warm airs push through 
it, feeding the marvellous tropical mosses. It's 
a long way to Savannah — distance seems to be 
intensified by the narrowness of the grey corridor 
of the road through the vast high forest. There 
rise from the obstructed earth black oak and 
sterile vine and palmettos like ladies' hands 
with opened fans. The surface whence the 
forest grows is swampy, old, lichened, mossy, 
springy. It's hard to find solid earth, so many 
branches seem to be overgrown with verdure 
and moss. In the heat long snakes glide away 
from your approach, having seen you before 
you saw them. And rat^ rat, rat, the red-polled 
woodpeckers in their tree-top cities call upon 
one another and seek their insect luncheons and 
then flit home and knock again. The white 
people speak a " nigger brogue " which is almost 
indistinguishable from Negro talk, and they 
never pronounce an r. The Negro seems very 
poor and illiterate and afraid. " Hear comes the 
OLD RELIABLE FRIND with the LIFT of 
CHRIST," says a notice on an old wooden church 
of coloured folk. 

I am overtaken by a Negro with a waggon 
and twelve bales of cotton, and though he seems 
trying to race a huge touring car " heading for 
Florida " with trunks on top and whole family 
within, he slows down to pick me up. His is 
an enormous lorry, ponderous and ramshackle, 
shaking the bones out of your body as it takes 



i68 CHILDREN OF. THE SLAVES vi 

you along. The Negro boy held the steering- 
wheel nonchalantly with one hand and blundered 
along at top speed. After ten miles of this we 
entered one of the vast cotton warehouses out- 
side Savannah, passed the gateman who would 
not have let me in but he thought I was in charge, 
and we saw where a hundred thousand bales 
were being housed and kept. Scores of Negroes 
were at work manipulating bales on trolley- 
trains run by petrol engines all over the asphalted 
way, and from shed to shed. 

" Are you shipping much cotton ? " I asked 
of a white man who was giving us a receipt for 
the cotton brought in, whilst a dozen husky 
fellows were unloading the waggon. " Not 
much," said he. *' Holding for better prices," 
he added, and smiled knowingly. 

Then with the empty waggon we rolled off 
for Savannah, and the boy-driver told me he 
was going to work his passage soon on a ship 
from Savannah to New York. " We don't get 
a chance down here." 

And yet how much better off was he with 
his waggon, and Union wages, and life in 
a large city than the poor ex-slaves on the 
land ! 

Whilst unlading, it had become dark. But 
an hour more through the forest brought us to 
the outlying slums of Savannah, and then to the 
*' red light district " where were music and 
dancing and open doors and windows and the 
red glow of the lamp luring coloured youth to 
lowest pleasures ; then to the grandeur and 



VI TRAMPING TO THE SEA 169 

spaciousness of modern Savannah and the white 
man's civihsation, up out of Georgia, up out of 
the pit, through the veil of the forest and of 
Nature to the serene heights of world -civihsation 
once more. 



VII 

AFTER THE WAR : THE VOTE 

The march to the Sea, Uke John Brown's soul 
marching to Eternity, was a moving symbol 
of the faith of the war. Men saw in it the march 
of the cause of humanity as a whole. Sherman 
offered Savannah as a Christmas gift to Abraham 
Lincoln, and the star of Bethlehem shone anew 
over a ravaged land and ravaged hearts. The 
news when it came was a signal for great popular 
rejoicing and a prophetic belief in the end of 
the war. Four months afterward there was a 
general capitulation of the South. It is true 
America's most innocent and Christian man was 
destroyed by hate — another Golgotha day in 
history, when on Good Friday in a theatre in 
Washington Lincoln was assassinated — but the 
fight had been fought and the victory won. It 
became possible to ratify the abolition of slavery 
by the re-establishment of the Union and the 
common consent of all the States. 

" In Sixty-Three the slaves were free ; in 
Sixty-Four the war was o'er," says a rhyme, but 
in truth the Negroes were not free in the South 
till the South had been conquered by the United 

170 



VII AFTER THE WAR: THE VOTE 171 

States, and the war was not o'er till April 1865. 
It was on the 24th May 1865 that the Army 
marched past the White House in its final grand 
review, bearing aloft its battle-riven flags festooned 
with flowers. There was glory in the North ; 
the twilight of confusion in the South ; and 
the Negroes were free. Peace came once more, 
though not peace in men's hearts. War hate 
still bred hate, and the lust of cruelty called 
into being its monster progeny of revenge. 

The fanatic who murdered Lincoln in doing 
so struck the whole of his own people. The 
planters who burned the runaway slaves, the 
soldiers who during the war put to death the 
Negro prisoners who fell into their hands, the 
actions generally of the embittered, brought 
the calamity of retaliatory spite not only upon 
themselves but upon tlie innocent and the just 
and the kind. A policy of punishment and not 
of reconciliation ruled at Washington, and the 
white South suffered. The Negroes and the 
Negro cause suffered also. The ex-slaves were 
given votes and put on an electoral equality 
with white men. This was a palpable injustice 
and indignity. The Negroes in 1865 were not 
prepared in mind or in soul or in knowledge for 
the exercise of the franchise. Neither were they 
gifted with the power of will and physical strength 
necessary to hold the suffrage when it was given 
them. There was the same exaltation nationally 
when the victory was won as there had been 
locally when Sherman marched through, and the 
same disillusion and the same destruction of 



172 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vii 

bridges was to take place also. Where the white 
man went the black man could not follow. For 
a brief space of time the ex-slave dominated the 
white South. The black vote was exploited by 
political charlatans : Negroes did not vote, they 
were voted, and then a way was made out of 
injustice to put the white man and ex-master 
of slaves in the right again. For wrong though 
the South had been, the war should still have 
left the educated white man in authority and 
not put him under the heel of the illiterate. The 
poor slaves just freed, but not educated, not 
blown upon by the winds of culture, not sunned 
in America's bright moral sun, were in no 
position to vote upon America's destiny or to 
take a directing hand in her affairs. As is usual 
after a war, the victors wanted a revolution in 
the land where they had won. The white North 
revenged itself on the white South. But a black 
revolution was a thing that could not be. Racial 
instinct came to the help of the whites, and through 
general tacit understandings and organised con- 
spiracies the new black masters were ousted from 
their places. Then fear of what might be, and 
once more, revenge born of the brief Black 
dominion, went as far the other way in injustice. 
Nigger - baiting arose, mob -violence took the 
place of the justice of the Courts. The central 
authority was flouted, first covertly and then 
openly. The Negro was hustled back to peonage 
and servility, and one might be tempted to think 
that the Cause for which all the blood of the Civil 
War had been shed was lost. It would have 



VII AFTER THE WAR: THE VOTE 173 

been lost had not slavery become a complete 
anachronism in world society. The yoke could 
not be re-imposed upon the Negro's neck. His 
freedom has persisted, it has grown. 

The maximum of persecution of the Negro 
in recent years does not equal the misery of 
slavery. Even if all the lynchings and burnings 
and humiliations and disabilities be put together 
they do not add up to one year of servitude. 
Most Negroes understand that. They know 
that, no matter what may be the vicissitudes they 
pass through, they are still progressing to an ever 
fuller freedom. 

In viewing the whole situation one is apt to 
under-estimate the unhappiness of slavery and 
to magnify the unhappiness of the present era 
of freedom. It is blessed to be free. Even to 
be the worst possible peon is far removed from 
slavery. The great significance of the Emanci- 
pation is that the Negro slaves were set free — free 
for anything and everything in the wide world. 
In the prison-house of a national institution of 
slavery there was no hope, no sense of the ultimate 
possibilities latent in a man. But with freedom 
every baby became a potential Alexander. 

In 1863 a new life began to germinate, began 
to have promise. Some thought that it must 
show forth at once. But that was fallacious. It 
was bound to spend a long time underground 
before the first modest shoots of the new should 
appear. Many have argued that the Negro 
would come to nothing in his freedom, and even 
those who have believed in his destiny have been 



174 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vii 

impatient. Premature greetings have been given 
time and oft to new Negro culture and responsi- 
bility. The only criticism made here is that 
they were premature. The greatest of these 
was the suffrage. 

I have said that the denial to the Negro of his 
legitimate vote is a part of peonage, and I have 
also said that it was wrong to give the freed men 
votes at once. I should like to explain how 
Negro suffrage stands to-day. 

In the first place it was wrong to enfranchise 
the ex-slaves, not because they were not entitled 
to votes, but because they were not ready to be 
entrusted with votes. In 1863 in England as 
well as in America the world could be saved 
by the ballot-box alone. It was a rebellion 
against this belief that caused Carlyle to ful- 
minate against " Nigger Democracy." In talk- 
ing with Dean Brawley of Morehouse College 
at Atlanta I noticed a prejudice against Car- 
lyle which is very widespread among educated 
coloured people. In the first place I should like 
to assure them that the use by Carlyle of the 
expression " nigger " has nothing in common 
with the brutal and contemptuous sense in which 
that word is used in America. Thus we say, 
'' working like a nigger^'' an expression derived 
from tlie life of the slaves ; *' nigger-diploma^^ 
a contemptuous English expression for a high 
degree such as Doctor of Literature or Doctor 
of Divinity, thought to have been purchased 
in America at a Negro University ; the ten little 
nigger boysy the black boys who come so swiftly 



VII AFTER THE WAR: THE VOTE 175 

to bad ends in the familiar rhyme of our child- 
hood. " Nigger " is in England a playful word 
for a Negro, and is used always in the nursery. 
It is the children's word for a black man, prefer- 
ably for one who has been thoroughly blacked. 
Carlyle was one of the most reverent of men, 
and not accustomed to speak contemptuously 
of God's creatures. But he was contemptuous 
of the suffrage. To him and to Ruskin and to 
many another it seemed absurd that the voice 
of the educated man and the illiterate should 
have the same value ; that the many who are 
dull and ignorant should be allowed to out-vote 
the few who know. The enfranchisement of 
the freed Negroes furnished Carlyle with an 
example of carrying an absurdity to its logical 
conclusion. 

The alternative to government by ballot has, 
however, proved to be government by the domina- 
tion of a military caste, and mankind generally 
in our time has shown that it prefers the former. 
The ballot-box with all its absurdity seems 
nevertheless our only means of carrying on in 
freedom. It would be wrong to grant the 
suffrage to the millions of savages under British 
rule in Africa, for tliey could not use it wisely. 
And it was wrong to enfranchise Negrodom 
in America with a stroke of the pen after the 
Civil War. It has done the Negroes more 
harm than good. 

To have such a grievance as to be legally 
enfranchised and yet physically denied the use 
of the vote is of course great harm. It affects 



176 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vii 

the social mind. It makes bitterness and brews 
agitation. To be conscripted and called upon 
to fight for the country when this grievance is 
in mind has aggravated the harm already done. 
" We are not too low to fight the foe, but we're 
low to share in the spoil," as the story goes. I 
heard a Negro comedian indulging in funniosities 
at a coloured music-hall win great applause by 
a chansonette — 

Cullud folk will be ready to fight 
When cullud folk has equal right. 
I a'nt so foolish as I seem to be. 

— and it is a reasonable sentiment. 

The fact is, Negrodom has to a great extent 
qualified to vote. Half the population is sunk 
in economic bondage and illiteracy, but the other 
half has more than average capacity for citizen- 
ship. Yet in spite of the Constitution and the 
Federal Authority these many millions remain 
practically without voice in all the Southern 
States. Physical force is exerted to keep them 
from the ballot-box. 

The Southerner aff^ects to believe that the 
educated Negro is even less fitted to have a vote 
than the illiterate sort. But that is because he 
hates to see the Negro rise. He will tell you that 
in certain States the Negroes outnumber the 
Whites by ten to one. But that is a characteristic 
misstatement. It is hard to find a city where the 
Black vote could exceed the White. In the last 
census the blackest cities were Birmingham and 
Memphis, where the Negroes proved to be forty 
per cent of the population, whilst in — 



5» 

35 



?J 



VII AFTER THE WAR: THE VOTE 177 

Richmond it was 37 per cent. 

Atlanta „ 34 

Nashville „ 34 

Washington „ 29 

Nev^ Orleans „ 27 

And there are only two States where the Negro 

population exceeds that of the White, namely, 

Mississippi and South Carolina, where the 

Negroes were ^'j per cent and t^c^ per cent of the 

total population. 

If, as seems only fair, an illiteracy test were 
made legal by amendment of the Constitution, 
white voters would outnumber black by a large 
margin. 

As for having anything to fear from the 
educated Negro vote, there is, of course, one 
matter of anxiety. The Negro would be bound 
to fight for social justice ; and violence would be 
done to racial prejudice. 

The South is, however, determined that the 
Negro shall never vote again. Year by year the 
coloured people as a whole grow in intelligence, 
in capacity, and in the number of its intelligentsia^ 
but the South is not moved. It sees no explosion 
in the future, and makes no provision for one — 
will not, till the explosion come. 

Racial fear no doubt plays a large part in 
this determination, but there is a further con- 
sideration. The " Solid South " votes Democrat to 
a man. The Negro, if he had a chance, would 
vote as solidly Republican. I remember being 
present at a violent quarrel at a Negro meeting 
in New Orleans — one Negro, though he had not 

N 



178 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vii 

a vote, had actually called himself a Democrat. 
A remedying of the defective suffrage would be an 
enormous access of strength to the Republican 
party. For this reason Democrats exaggerate 
their racial fear. And also for that reason every 
Republican politician who gains power is bound 
to make a bid to break the solid South. Senator 
Lodge himself was the author of a " Force Bill " 
which came near enactment some years ago, and 
it would have placed Federal soldiers at every 
ballot-box in the South, to protect black voters. 

The South defies anything which the Federal 
Government may devise. As Senator Lamar, of 
Mississippi, said to his colleagues in the Senate : 

*' But there is one issue upon which the South 
is solid, and upon which she will remain solid — 
the protection of her civilisation from subjection 
to an ignorant and servile race. And neither 
Federal honours nor Federal bayonets can shake 
that soUdity." 

President Wilson's administration has been 
one which was dominated by Southern Democrats, 
and as the Southern vote has been behind him 
and them, there could hardly be any help given 
to the Negroes. The Democratic failure has 
nevertheless been a real disappointment. Wilson's 
radical idealism, his plunge to the root of trouble 
wherever trouble was, led many to believe that 
he would do something to remedy the pitiable 
state of the Negroes. Some legal palliative would 
come with a better grace from Democrats than 
a forceful measure enacted over their heads by 
Republicans. Perhaps with the downfall of the 



VII AFTER THE WAR: THE VOTE 179 

Democratic party and the possible triumph of the 
Republicans something practical will be done 
during the next few years to help the Negro. 
The main hope of Colour must lie in a Repub- 
lican President and a Republican Senate being in 
power together. November 1920 and its elec- 
tions will be as fateful for the Negro as for the 
world. 

Roosevelt gave his party a generous lead when 
he received Booker T. Washington at the White 
House, and I heard young Colonel Roosevelt 
one evening, with his father's verve and pluck, 
promise a vast Negro audience a '' square deal " 
if they would have patience. That square deal 
is the Negro's right, especially in the matter of 
the vote. It is strange that the movement for 
the '* rights of man," inaugurated practically in 
the French Revolution, should have stopped short 
about 1870, and the contrary ideal of the " privi- 
lege of individuals " begun to progress. As the 
Negro pastor, Sutton Griggs, very forcefully put it 
in his address to the National Baptist Convention 
at Newark, New Jersey : 

In 1792 a motion was carried in the English House 
of Commons providing for the gradual abolition of the 
slave traffic. In 1794 the French Convention decreed 
that the rights of French citizens should be granted 
to all slaves in French colonies. In 1834 the British 
abolished slavery entirely within their dominions. In 
1848 French slaves were emancipated. In 1863 the 
Dutch set their slaves free. The South, unmoved 
by world-thought, clung to its slaves, but they were 
violently torn from her grasp in the Civil War. Under 



i8o CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES vii 

the impulse of the doctrine of the native equaHty of all 
men the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of 
the United States, forbidding the denial of the right 
to vote because of race, colour, or previous condition 
of servitude, was adopted in the year 1869. In the 
year 1870, bills were passed by Congress providing 
fines and imprisonment for any one who even tried 
to prevent the Negro from voting or to keep his vote 
from being counted. 

But all of the forces that could be marshalled have 
not up to the present time been able to move our 
nation or the world one inch forward in a straight line 
from this point. The action just mentioned stands 
as the last recorded national act designed to incorporate 
the Negro race in the governmental structure without 
reservations. Further efforts were made by powerful 
forces but all have proved to be abortive. In 1875 
a very comprehensive bill intended to make the Negroes 
of the South secure in their rights passed the lower 
House of Congress but was defeated in the Senate. 
Some years later, the Lodge Election Bill, having the 
same purpose, passed the House but was defeated in 
the Senate. The Republican party's platform, upon 
which President Taft was elected, contained an 
unequivocal declaration in favour of enforcing the 
Fifteenth Amendment in letter and in spirit, but no 
legislation in that direction was attempted during his 
term of office. 

To-day, however, in a v^orld-v^ar the greatest 
affirmation of the rights of nations if not of man 
has been made. Following upon it, in the 
United States the suffrage has been obtained 
for women, which automatically includes also 
the black women. There is an opportunity to 
resume the interrupted advance. 



VIII 

IN ALABAMA : COLOUR AND 
COLOUR PREJUDICE 

I MADE an expedition into Alabama from Atlanta 
and again saw something of that State when I 
got down to the Gulf of Mexico. In the matter 
of Negro life it is first of all important because 
of Tuskegee Institute, which, like the College 
at Hampton, is sometimes called the Mecca of 
the American Negro. It was founded by Booker 
T. Washington, and is the visible expression of 
tlie self-help idea. There, as at Hampton, the 
ex-slave is taught to do something as the end of 
his schooling. The establishment is now under 
the guidance of the beloved Dr. Moton, a wise 
and genial African giant of pure Negro extraction: 
his ancestor is said to have been a prince who in 
selling his captives was himself lured on to the 
slaving vessel to drink. He fell asleep on board, 
and when he awakened found himself chained 
among the slaves he had sold. Poetic justice 
thus overtook him. As a boy barely able to 
sign his name young Moton first appeared at 
Hampton, and the authorities were at first doubt- 
ful about accepting him as a student. But what 

i8i 



1 82 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES viii 

they would have missed ! Dr. Moton is the 
very best type of Negro teacher, the worthy 
successor of Booker Washington. Tuskegee, be- 
sides its educational work, does much to combat 
race-hatred, and keeps public opinion in America 
well informed on the lynchings that take place. 
The presence of the Institute in the backward 
State of Alabama is very important for the future 
of the South. 



At Birmingham, Alabama, I was presented to 
a very charming young widow who had been 
left rather rich, a well-educated lady of leisure, 
who lived well and dressed well, and was possessed 
of a recognisable American chic. I met her in 
town, and then in response to an invitation called 
on her at her house. She was certainly a Negro 
beauty, and I have no doubt was highly desired 
in marriage. There was a clear five thousand a 
year besides her charms, and it was impossible 
not to feel some of the glamour of that fact — 

The belle of the season is wasting an hour upon you. 

" Mmmmmmmm^^ she cooed to everything I said. 
She was shy as a pedestal without its statue ; her 
eyes burned, and I could not help feeling all 
the atmosphere of " romance." If she had been 
a shade lighter in complexion any white man 
might have loved her. 

Her children, or was it the children of one of 
her black servants, were playing with a family 
of real Negro dolls, not " nigger-dolls," the stove- 



VIII IN ALABAMA 183 

black, red - lipped nigger of the nursery, but 
coloured dolls, after Nature. This was very- 
charming, and I should have liked to see a baby 
woolly-head at the swelling bosom of my beautiful 
acquaintance. She would have made a delight- 
ful study for a black Madonna. 

To have their own dolls is one of the new 
racial triumphs of the coloured people in America. 
Formerly they had to put up with the pink-and- 
white darlings with yellow hair and pale blue 
eyes, those reflections of German babies, which 
have hitherto held the market of dolls. It has 
taken the Negroes half a century of freedom 
before it occurred to them that the doll being 
the promise of baby-to-be it was not entirely 
good for morals and for black racial pride that 
their little girls should prize white dollies. Per- 
haps it was mooted first as a business proposition. 
It might be a paying enterprise to manufacture 
real coloured folk's dolls, brown dolls, mulatto 
dolls, near-white dolls, black and kinky ones, sad 
or pretty ones. The year 1920 sees a lively 
doll-industry in progress. It is believed that 
in time the white dolly will become a rarity in 
the Negro home. Whence children may learn 
a lesson : Your pet doll would not perhaps be 
another girl's pet doll. 

It was also at southern Brum that, calling on 

the Reverend W , I happened upon a singular 

conversation : 

*' Now, isn't it absurd for us to have white 
angels ? " 

*' You surely would not like them black .'' " 



it 



184 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES viii 

" We give Sunday-school cards to our children 
with white angels on them. It's wrongs 
Black angels would be ugly." 
No more ugly than white." 

I thought the whiteness of the angels was as 
the whiteness of white light which contained all 
colour. That, however, was lost on the Reverend, 
who happened to be a realist. 

*' Christ himself was not white. He would 
have had to travel in a Jim Crow car," said he. 
'' But put it to yourself : isn't it absurd for us 
to be taught that the good are all white, and that 
sin itself is black ? " 

" It does seem to leave you in the shade," 
said I. 

" Expressions such as ' black as sin ' ought to 
be deleted from the language. One might as 
well say * white as sin.' " 

I ransacked my brain rapidly. 

" We say ' pale as envy,' " said I. 

'' ' Black spite,' " he retorted. " Why should 
it be black .? " 

I could not say. 

" Then Adam and Eve in the Garden," he 
went on, " are always shown as beautifully white 
creatures, whereas, considering the climate, they 
may well have been as dark-skinned as any 
Negro couple in Alabama. Babylon itself was 
built by Negroes." 

" Would you have Adam and Eve painted 
black ? " 

" Why, yes, I would." 

This struck me as rather diverting, but it was 



VIII IN ALABAMA 185 

quite serious. Later, in New York one night 
at Liberty Hall, before I was driven out as a 
white interloper, I heard an orator say to an 
admiring host of Negroes : " Why, I ask you, 
is God always shown as white ? It is because 
He is the white man's God. It is the God of our 
masters. (Yes, brother, that's it.) It's the God 
of those who persecute and despise the coloured 
people. Brothers, we've got to knock that white 
God down and put up a black God — we've got 
to re-write the Old Testament and the New from 
a black man's point of view. Our theologians 
must get busy on a black God." 

This was what we Whites call clap-trap, and 
irreverent as well. But it seemed to take well 
with the Harlem brothers. Once more a lesson 
may be derived for older children : If you make 
God in your own image, it does not follow that 
other children will agree that it is like. 

It reminded me of the enthusiasm of the soldiers 
when they got home from the war and took a 
good look at their own womenkind. They 
thought them so much more good-looking than 
French or German girls. Girls and dolls, angels 
and Gods, we like them to correspond to our own 
complexion. 

Birmingham at night glows to the sky with 
furnaces. A hundred thousand black proletarians 
earn their living on coal and steel, stirring up 
soot to heaven. Though I met there the charming 

Mrs. J whom I have mentioned, and also 

other educated Negroes, it is not to be supposed 
that it is a place of culture, white or black. It 



1 86 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES viii 

is a straggling city with an ugly, misshapen, ill- 
balanced interior or centre-part like a table spread 
with small tea-cups and large jam-pots. It will 
not stand comparison with Atlanta or New 
Orleans or Richmond. Strictly speaking, it is 
not a city but an agglomeration of industrialism. 
Nevertheless the factories which surround it 
are owned by companies of vast resources, and 
it is claimed that in the steel industry there is 
some of the most extensive industrial plant in the 
world. Business is little disturbed by strikes. 
On the gates of the vast factory estates is written : 
We do not want you unless you are able to look 
ajter yourself. Careless men are always liable to 
accident. Some notices declare " Non-Union 
shops," others " Open shops," but it does not 
seem to matter much. The Unions have little 
power. Wages are high, though not as high as 
in the North, but the cost of living is very much 
less, and there is a lower standard of respectability. 
In some cases the industrials are housed on the 
factory grounds and you see Negro dwellings 
which amount to industrial barracks. Every gate 
has its porter or civilian sentry, and in order to 
reach your working-man you may have to show 
what your business is with him. On the way to 
his door you are met by the notice that trespassers 
will be prosecuted. 

There is no encouragement to loiterers, but 
you may see the Negro gangs at work, organised 
squads of workers hard at it, with Negro fore- 
men or white foremen. A myriad - fold Negro 
industrialism straggles near mines and furnaces. 



VIII IN ALABAMA 187 

blacker than in Nature. The coaly-black Negro 
collier, the sooted face of steel worker and tar 
operative, are curious comments on whether it is 
good to be black or to be white. Coke products 
flame and smoke at innumerable pipes, whilst 
locomotives are panting and steaming forward 
and back, and a platoon of chimney-stacks belches 
forth dense blackness, which, enfolded in the 
breeze, wanders over the heavens and one's eyes. 
I strayed in at the doors of some very dirty 
Negro houses. Here was little of the amour 
propre of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Anti- 
kink was not being generally applied, and as 
far as the little ones were concerned mother's 
little Alabama coon seemed to be getting a little 
bit too much for mother. It is not difficult to 
understand the disgust of people in the North 
when in 19 17 and 19 18 Negro families rolled 
up in their thousands from the South — the real 
obscure, fuzzy -wuzzy, large -featured, smelly 
Negro of submerged Alabama. The sight of 
them was responsible for much of the feeling 
which inspired the Northern riots. *' We know 
our Northern Negroes," they said in the North, 
" but these from the South were like no Negroes 
we had ever seen." There was awakened much 
prejudice against these uncouth Africans, who 
seemed so near to the savage and the beast. It was 
natural perhaps. But high wages and new hopes 
and ideals quickly improve the black immigrant. 
He is being absorbed into the generality of black 
Negrodom in its established worthiness and 
respectability, above the Mason-Dixon line. It 



1 88 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES viii 

would be difficult after a few years to pick out 
a Southern Negro in a crowd in New York. 

The little black children in the suburbs of 
Birmingham were alternately very confiding 
and then suddenly scared and then confiding 
again as I tried to talk to them. There was much 
fear in their bodies. They seemed if anything 
to be blacker than their parents, and I volunteered 
the opinion that a good deal of their colour would 
come off in a course of hot baths. But washing 
facilities were of a rudimentary kind, and the 
passion for being fit and fresh could not readily 
be developed. 

The white South could improve its Negroes 
infinitely if it cared to do so. On the whole, 
however, it does not wish its Negroes to rise, 
and seems most happy when they can readily 
be identified with the beasts that perish. But 
if it thought more highly of the Negro the Negro 
would rise. 

I visited Prof. K in his three-storied house. 

He had been one of the Negro Four-minute men 
who had made popular addresses to his people 
during the war fervour, inducing them to be 
" patriotic " and subscribe their dollars to various 
funds. He said he was deeply discouraged. 
He did not belong to Alabama and would much 
rather live in a more civilised part of the world, 
but he gave his life for the uplift of the children. 
He was doing what he could, but the Whites gave 
no co-operation. In these factory areas the 
coloured children outnumbered the Whites five 
to one. Teaching was of course segregated : 



VIII IN ALABAMA 189 

he had no objection to that, but very very Uttle 
was done by comparison for the black children. 
They had most need of blessing — but they 
shared only in parsimony and curses. He showed 
me his school — a ramshackle building of old 
faded wood. " Oh, but our teachers have en- 
thusiasm," said he. ** They're doing a work of 
God, and they love it. Yes, sir." 

I obtained an impression which I think is 
sound, that there was more keenness to teach on 
the part of the coloured people of Alabama 
than on the part of Whites. White schools find 
some difficulty in obtaining good teachers ; 
coloured schools find no such difficulty. If 
coloured students only go on in the way they 
have begun there is quite a good prospect of 
their obtaining posts to teach white children in 
white schools — not perhaps soon in Alabama, 
for it is strongly prejudiced, but elsewhere first, 
and then in this State. To start off with, they 
would be excellent with young children. There is 
a broad road of conquest standing open there. As 
Booker T. Washington very sagaciously pointed 
out to his people, there is no stronger argument 
in their favour than personal attainment. 

However, looking around the houses of the 
industrialised masses here, one can only be 
appalled at the inadequacy of civilisation. There 
is little that is better than in the forlorn mining 
villages of the Russian Ural. It makes a sort 
of Negro little better than a nigger, and it is 
surprising that he does not run amuck more 
often than he does. 



190 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES viii 

If the outlying settlements reminded of the 
Ural, the centre of the city reminded of nothing 
better than Omsk. Here on the main street, 
at Eighteenth Street, is a very "jazzy" corner, 
resplendent with five times too much light at 
night, vocal with noisy music, and swarming 
with Negroes of all castes and colours. By day 
it is like a web of gregarious larvae ; by night 
it is the entrance to wonderland. Here is massed 
together the Negro enterprise of the city. Most 
of the characters of Octavus Roy Cohen's clever 
Negro stories are thought to be derived from 
this corner — Mr. Florian Slappey, Lawyer Evans 
Chew, and the rest. Do not their ways and 
doings divert a vast number of readers of the 
Saturday Evening Post ? I may have met some 
of them. I cannot say. But I met their like. 

The chief establishment is the Savings Bank 
building, a squat six-story erection in red brick. 
It is flanked by places of amusement, but in itself 
it is an ark of professionalism and learning. It 
is a hive of many cells or cabinets, and every 
cabinet has its special occupant, a doctor here, a 
dentist there, a lawyer on the other, another 
doctor, a professor, an agent, and so on. You 
may meet nearly all who count in Birmingham 
Negrodom here. By the way, the local way of 
pronouncing the name of the city is Bumming 
Ham ; if you say politely, Birmingham, pro- 
nouncing with lips and teeth in the front part of 
the mouth, no one will understand what you 
mean. A Negro pastor whirled me round to 
the hub of Bumming Ham in his brand-new car. 



VIII IN ALABAMA 



191 



He had lately had a very successful Revival of 
which the motor was an outward and visible 
sign. And I called on many of the notables. I 
met a short, scrubby Negro of fifty, whose com- 
plexion seemed to have been drenched in yellow- 
ness. He explained this by the statement that 

the blood of Senator H flowed in his veins. 

The Senator had taken a liberty with his mother, 
who for her part was thoroughly black. He 
thanked the Senator, since probably he had given 
him some brains ; his mother's side of the family 
was unusually hard-headed. He had become a 
Professor. His daughter was a remarkable public 

speaker, and as Senator H was an orator, 

he used to tell his Sarah that there was Senator 

H coming out in her. " The Negro has 

been mixed with the best blood in the South," 
said he. " The blood of the masters, the English 
aristocrats who came first to the country." 

I did not think there was much in that. 

'* Are mulattoes increasing or decreasing in 
numbers } " I asked. 

He thought they were increasing. But he did 
not deny the fact that Negro children tend to 
revert to type. When two mulattoes marry the 
children are generally darker than the parents, and 
often real Negro types. The white man's strain 
is thrown out rapidly. 

" How then is it that mulattoes and near- 
whites are on the increase } " The professor 
thought for one reason there was still much 
illegitimacy, and for another the Negro race under 
civilised conditions was getting a little fairer on 



192 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES viii 

the whole. Some of the mulatto women were 
extremely beautiful, and consequently more 
attractive to white men. The white women of 
the South hated the mulatto women because they 
took their husbands away from them. He 
thought a good deal of race-hatred was fostered 
by the white woman, who instinctively hated the 
other race. 

" Did you ever hear of a union between a 
Negro woman and a white man that was on other 
than an animal plane ? " I asked him. 

Professor M knew of several instances 

where an infatuation for a Negro woman had 
inspired a white man to make good in life. It was 
generally a tragedy, for they could not marry, 
and they were subject to coarse suspicion and 
raillery and intrigue. It stood in the way of the 
white man finding a white bride, and of the Negro 
woman finding a Negro husband. Where a 
white man had become interested in a Negro 
woman it was not good for the health of a Negro 
man to pretend to her affections. The mob- 
feeling against Negroes was so readily aroused 
that it was the easiest thing in Alabama for a 
white man who had a grudge against a Negro 
to *' frame up " a crime or a scandal and make 
him leave the neighbourhood or remain constantly 
in danger of being roughly handled. 

Alabama has a bad record for lynching. It 
is about fifth in the list of bad States. I under- 
stood that lynching was on the increase. The 
old folk, the people who had been slave-owners, 
the settled inhabitants of places hke Anniston 



VIII IN ALABAMA 193 

and Montgomery, and of the country knew all the 
family history of their " Niggers " from A to Z, 
and what they might do or could do, and they 
were friendly, compared with the " new sort." 

The poor Whites loved to be in mobs and feel 
in mobs. Over their meals and at work and in 
the trolley-cars they loved to talk in the way of 
the mob. Individually they don't understand 
the Negro — they are afraid of him, like dogs that 
will only attack when in numbers. They mostly 
came to America after the Civil War and the 
Emancipation and found the Negroes in possession 
of land or of work or of houses. They had their 
grievances, and instead of visiting them upon God 
or the Devil or Society in general found the Negro 
a convenient fetish and visited their discontent 
on him. It soon became a habit, then it became 
a sort of lust and brutal sport. 

The older and more solid people have been 
much annoyed by the growth of this brutality, 
and something definite is being done to combat it 
in Alabama. Committees have been formed, or 
were being formed in the autumn of 19 19, in 
every county in the State, half white, half 
coloured, to inquire into racial strife and see 
what could be done for life and freedom. 

I heard an old Negro say, '' We had two clocks 
on the cabin wall, and one was very slow and 
deliberate and always seemed to say : 

' Take yo time. Take yd time I ' 

but the other gabbled to us : 

' Get-together^ get-together^ get-together ! ' 

o 



194 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES viii 

Tha's what we got to do to-day, brothers, — 
get together." 



The Negroes are fond of emphasising the 
triviahty of colour difference. They reprove the 
white man playfully. *' Why get so excited about 
difference in colour ? We believe in equality 
of rights for all men," I heard a leader say, '* for 
all men of whatever colour — white, black, brown, 
or yellow, or blue." And his audience laughed. 
'' Two boys go into a shop ; one buys a red toy, 
the other a blue toy — but it is not very important 
which colour — the toy's the same." 

But, of course, colour prejudice or preference 
is not such a haphazard matter, and prejudice 
against the Negro is prejudice against more than 
colour. The toy, so to speak, is different. It 
may be as good, but it is different. The body, 
and especially the skull, of a Negro is different 
from that of the white man. The nervous 
system, the brain, the mind and soul, are different. 
I heard the theory put forward in the name of 
Christian Science that in God's perfect plan 
there were no Negroes. Their dark skins were 
other men's evil thought about them. All men 
were really white, and the outward appearance 
of their skin could be made to correspond to the 
white idea by concentrated true thought about 
them. That is a charitable and interesting faith 
to live by. But what of the new line of Negroes 
who are proud of being black, who abhor pallor 
as nausea ? There are many Negroes who now 



VIII IN ALABAMA 195 

have a religion of being black. The new genera- 
tion of children is being brought up to glorify 
Negro colour. It is told of the princes and 
w^arriors from whom it is descended, learns with 
the geography of the United States the geo- 
graphy of Africa, and delights in the cognomen 
— Afro-American. The colour issue will never 
be settled by all Negroes becoming Whites. It 
seems clear also that it cannot be solved by all 
men becoming mulattoes. There seems to remain 
just one obvious solution, and that is in distinct 
and parallel development, equality before the law, 
and mutual understanding and tolerance. 



IX 
THE SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW 

Shoemaker : No, my lord, they don't hurt you there. 

Fopptngton : I tell thee, they pinch me execrably. 

Shoemaker : Well, then, my lord, if those shoes pinch you, I'll be 
d— d. 

Fopptngton : Why, wilt thou undertake to persuade me I cannot 
feel ? 

Shoemaker-. Your lordship may please to feel what you think fit; 
but that shoe does not hurt you. 

A Trip to Scarborough. 

The Southern point of view can be gathered 
together in a very short chapter. Its expression 
has so crystallised that it can be set down in a 
series of paragraphs and phrases. Whosoever 
doth not believe, without doubt he shall be 
damned everlastingly. Wherever you meet a 
Southerner, be it in the remotest corner of the 
earth, it is the same as in native Alabama. I was 
talking to the Mother Superior of a convent one 
day in a genial English countryside. Although 
I did not know it, she derived from Mississippi. 
I mentioned the subject of the Negro, and from 
her quiet face, meagre with fasting and pale with 
meditation, there flashed, nevertheless, the South- 
ern flame — like lightning across the room. 

You have only to mention the Negro sym- 

196 



IX SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW 197 

pathetically in a public meeting, and some one 
of Southern extraction will be found opposing to 
you a statement of the Southern creed. Thus, 
after speaking one morning at the Carnegie 
Hall, some one came up to me and said very 
emphatically, '* If you had lived among the 
Negroes you would not speak of them as you do '* 
— the inevitable Southerner. 
This is his creed : 

1. We understand the niggers and they like 
us. When they go North they're crazy till 
they get back to us. The North does not under- 
stand the nigger, pets him and spoils him, and at 
last dislikes him more than any Southerner. 

2. We have occasionally race - riots in the 
South, but they are generally caused by Yankees 
who have come South. In any case the worst 
riots in recent years have taken place in the 
North — at Washington, right under the Presi- 
dent's nose, and at Chicago. 

3. Few Northerners or Englishmen under- 
stand or can understand the Negro problem. 
Those who understand agree with us. Those 
who do not agree do not understand. 

4. The nigger is all right as long as he is kept 
in his place. You must make him keep his 
distance. If once you are familiar with him you 
are lost. He will give himself such airs that it 
will be impossible to get on with him. 

5. The nigger is an animal. The male of 
the species we generally call a " buck nigger." 
Like the animals, he is full of lust. Like the 
animals also, he does not feel pain. When he is 



198 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ix 

burned it is not the same as a white man burning. 
Like the animals, he has no soul either to lose or 
to save, and Christianity and education are alike 
wasted on him. The polished Negro is merely 
disgusting, like an ape in evening dress. You 
clothe him and dress him and put him at table, 
but he's an animal all the same and is bound to 
behave like one. You can't trust him. 

6. Under the influence of alcohol the Negro 
becomes a wild beast. He goes out of control. 
No fear of consequence can stop him. That is 
why some of the Southern States have been so 
ardently prohibitionist. 

7. If you had to live with them you'd under- 
stand how terrible it is. 

8. The nigger is a liar. He will say anything 
to your face to please you, or anything he thinks 
you want him to say. He'll tell you stories of 
lynchings that would make you think we lynched 
a nigger every week, instead of its being the 
rarest occurrence. 

9. When we lynch 'em it's for a very good 
reason — to protect our white women. Ask any 
of your English or Northern friends who pity 
the Negro whether they'd be willing to let their 
daughter marry a Negro. It's a horrible thought. 
But that is what the Negro is always after — the 
white woman. His fancy runs to her, and if it 
were not for the terror of being lynched we should 
never be able to leave our wives and daughters 
in security. The R in the middle of the Negro's 
name stands for his favourite proclivity. We 
burn 'em alive, yes, and do it slow, because 



' IX SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW 199 

fi killing's too good for them, and we get just so 
mad that every one wants to be there and have 
his part in putting them to death. In the North 
they do not lynch the Negro, but if one commits 
a crime they blame the whole Negro race. In 
the South we find the guilty man and punish 
him. 

10. When the white man goes to the Negro 
girl, it's different. He ought to be ashamed of 
himself, but there, it's human nature, and you 
can't be too stern with him. 

1 1. The white man is master and must remain 
master. But you do not realise how precarious 
his position is, outnumbered as he is ten to one 
in many districts. If the niggers joined hands 
against us we might be all killed in a night. 

12. They have votes. By the greatest in- 
justice ever committed in this country, the Con- 
stitution of the United States was amended to 
give these people votes and give them power 
over us. It is true we prevent them using their 
votes, and override the Constitution at every 
election. But political agitation goes on all the 
time. Every Negro would vote Republican if 
he had a chance, just because we vote Democrat. 
The Republican party knows that, and is always 
conspiring to restore to the Negro his lost power 
of voting. It will never succeed, but you can 
see the anxiety it causes us. 

13. As for education, it's bad for the nigger 
almost every way, and every new educated nigger 
makes it more difficult to keep 'em down. But 
kept down they must be. 



200 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ix 

14. Justice ? Well, you ask any nigger which 
he'd prefer, a Southern Court of Justice and a 
Southern Judge — or a Northern one. He would 
always prefer the Southern one, because in the 
South we understand him. And we're very fond 
of them and they of us. We get on very well 
together. 

Southern belief rarely strays out of this codified 
expression of thought. Get into converse with 
a Southerner on the subject of the Negroes, and 
you will almost always be able to refer his talk 
to I or 6 or 10 or some other paragraph of the 
foregoing. It is sufficiently pat and parrot-like 
to be amusing at last. The Negro himself is 
amused and pained by it. It amounts to this. 
The Southerner has made the Negro a pair of 
boots and he says they fit very well. The Negro 
says they don't fit. But the Southerner says 
he'll risk his salvation on it — he made the boots, 
and he knows his trade. The Negro, however, 
has to wear them. 

Perhaps if it were merely opinion, the idle- 
ness of the spoken word, the Southern point of 
view would merit less attention. Talk might 
be discounted, as mere talk is discounted by 
responsible minds. But it has unfortunately a 
remarkable counterpart in action. It is the 
concomitant of mob-murder and torture. It is 
expressed not only in narrow and bitter phrase 
but in actual flesh-twisting, not only in the 
flames of fanaticism but in real flames. 

Lynching is a popular sport in the South. It 
is perhaps popular in idea all over the world. 



IX SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW 201 

Even in Great Britain, where the poUceman is 
on a sort of moral pedestal, and is paid immense 
respect, how often among the masses does one 
hear the sentiment that such and such a person 
should be put against a wall and shot. Even 
in a nation that has such a phrase as " the majesty 
of the Law " the idea of taking the law into one's 
own hands is generally popular. In Russia, 
samosudt, as they are called, are frequent, and 
there is a short and terrible way with pick- 
pockets when tlie crowd finds them out. France's 
passion for la lanterne does not need to be enlarged 
upon. 

It is said that in countries where the laws are 
badly administered and the police held in little 
respect, lynchings are the more frequent. This 
is so. And whilst lynching can have a moral 
sanction at first, it may, if unchecked, grow to be 
a popular sport, a means of national holiday, 
like the shows of Rome, the auto-da-ff s of Spain, 
bull -fights and boxing competitions. When 
sufficient cause for a lynching is lacking, cause 
may have to be invented, just to let the folk 
have some " fun." In the United States to- 
day there are not sufficient crimes committed 
by the Negroes to satisfy the hunger of the 
crowd for lynchings. So inevitably many in- 
nocent black men are sacrificed just for sport's 
sake. 

Last year seventy-seven Negroes were lynched 
in America ; fourteen of them were burned alive. 
Burning appears to be on the increase, and is an 
obvious indication of growing mob-lust. This 



202 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ix 

form of brutality has long ago ceased in the 
Europe from which perhaps it was derived. 
Spaniards burned the Indians. Indians burned 
the settlers. Settlers burned their runaway slaves. 
And still to-day, in comparatively large numbers, 
the white Southern mob burns its Negro victims. 
It has its historical background. The thought 
of burning supposed delinquents alive is common 
in Southern minds. *' Make 'em die slow," is 
even a watchword. 

The Southern half of the United States is fond 
of saying that the North is now quite as bad in its 
treatment of the Negro. Happily, that is untrue. 
Seventy-two out of the seventy-seven lynchings 
occurred south of the Mason-Dixon line, and the 
rest occurred in the Western States. The North 
was immune. Unfortunately this good record 
was marred by some bad race-riots in Northern 
cities. 

Of all the States Georgia had the worst 
record for lynching. During 19 19 she lynched 
twenty-two persons, almost twice as many as the 
next worst, Mississippi. Two of these were for 
alleged attacks on white women. The rest were 
for a variety of crimes and misdemeanours. Thus, 
in April, a soldier was beaten to death at Blakely 
for wearing his uniform too long. In May, at 
Warrenton, Benny Richards was burned to death 
for murder. In the first week in August a soldier 
was shot for refusing to yield the road, and 
another was hanged for discussing the Chicago 
race-riots. At Pope City another soldier was 
lynched for shooting. In the belief that the 



IX SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW 203 

Negroes were planning a rising, Eli Cooper 
was taken at Ocmulgee and publicly burned at 
the stake. On September loth in the Georgian 
city of Athens another Negro, Obe Cox, was 
burned for murder. In Americus, in October, 
Ernest Glenwood was drowned as a propagandist. 
On October 5th Mr. Moses Martin was shot for 
incautious remarks. Next day, at Lincolnton, 
one Negro was shot for misleading the mob, and 
two others were burned alive for committing 
murder. Next day another was shot at Macon 
for attempted murder. Two were hanged at 
Buena Vista for intimacy with a white woman, 
and before the end of the month three more met 
their end from the mob for shooting and man- 
slaughter. 

As far as Georgia is concerned, this record 
disposes of the theory that lynching only takes 
place when white women have been attacked. 
As a matter of fact, the commonest motive for 
lynching of Negroes throughout the United 
States has been shown to be mob-condemnation 
of violence — not of lust. By far the greatest 
number of lynchings are for supposed murder. 
The mob lynches the Negro as a man shoots his 
dog when the latter has turned on him. Formerly 
attacks on women provided the greater number of 
cases. If the Negro were fool enough ever to 
make eyes at a white woman he risked his life. 
Many innocent admirations and misunderstand- 
ings have resulted in lynchings. As for rape, 
the Negro who commits it is bound to come to a 
violent end. Very few escape lynching, and the 



204 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ix 

South claims that whatever immunity it enjoys 
from Negro sexual crimes is due to the deterrent 
of lynch law. It claims that if the criminals 
were merely dealt with according to the law sexual 
crimes would speedily multiply. 

White people with the white -race instinct 
are generally ready to condone lynching when 
it is proved that it thus acts as a deterrent. Per- 
haps they are right, and they ought not to put 
it to themselves from the black man's point of 
view. But there is the other point of view, and 
there is the collective opinion of the coloured 
people on the subject, and that opinion is being 
organised and will make itself felt. It is worth 
attention and sympathy. 

Granted that the black man is the under-man 
as far as the Whites are concerned : is he not 
entitled to some protection for his own women ? 
One of these Georgia lynchings which occurred 
last year was a characteristic affair. It occurred 
at the town of Milan. Two young white fellows 
tried to break into a house and seize two coloured 
girls living there with their mother. They ran 
screaming to a neighbour's home. The Whites 
tore down a door, ripped up flooring, fired a gun, 
and made a great disturbance. One old Negro 
woman was so frightened she jumped into a well, 
and a worthy Negro grandfather of seventy-two 
years came out with a shot-gun and fired in 
defence of the women. One of the white men 
fired on him. The Negro fired back and killed 
him. The other white man fled. Now, for that 
deed, instead of being honoured as a brave man. 



IX SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW 205 

the Negro was seized by the white mob and hanged 
on a high post, and his old body was shot to 
pieces. This man was a good quiet citizen who 
went to chapel every Sunday, and had performed 
his duty at peace with God and man for a life- 
time. The man who led the lynchers was a 
*' Christian " preacher. Sworn evidence on the 
matter was taken, but the officers of the law in 
the county refused to act. 

This lynching was by no means exceptional 
in its character. To cite an exceptional affair, 
one might well take the happenings in Brooks 
and Lowndes Counties, Georgia, in May 19 18. 
Here a white bully, a farmer, with a spite 
against Negroes had been in Court and paid the 
fine of thirty dollars for gambling which had been 
pronounced against a certain coloured man called 
Sidney Johnson, and the latter had been sent to 
his estate to work off the debt. This is an 
example of the abuse of the law for keeping 
Negroes still in a state of slavery — a characteristic 
example of peonage. 

Johnson did the work to pay off the fine, but 
the farmer held him to a great deal more. Eventu- 
ally the Negro feigned sickness as an excuse for 
not continuing. The farmer thereupon came to 
his house and flogged him. It must be supposed 
this roused the devil in Johnson ; he threatened 
the farmer, and he paid a return visit to the white 
man's house, fired through the window, killing 
him and dangerously wounding his wife. He 
fled, and at once the usual lynching committee 
was formed. For a whole week they hunted 



2o6 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ix 

for Johnson, who had gone into hiding. During 
that time they lynched eleven Negroes, of whom 
one was a woman. 

The farmer had given cause for hatred. He 
had constantly ill-treated his labourers. On one 
occasion he had flogged a Negro woman. Her 
husband had stood up for her, and he had him 
arrested and sentenced to a term of penal servi- 
tude, i.e. put in the chain-gang. The mob 
concluded that this man must have shot 
the farmer for revenge, and they accordingly 
lynched him. He was shot to death. His wife 
would not be quieted, but kept insisting that her 
poor husband had been innocent. The mob 
therefore seized her. They tied her upside down 
by her ankles to a tree, poured petrol on her 
clothing, and burned her to death. White 
American women will perhaps take note that this 
coloured sister of theirs was in her eighth month 
with child. The mob around her was not angry 
or insensate, but hysterical with brutal pleasure. 
The clothes burned off her body. Her child, 
prematurely born, was kicked to and fro by the 
mob, and then . . . Well, that is perhaps suffi- 
cient. There are many details of this crime which 
cannot be set down in print. But all these facts 
were authenticated and submitted to the Governor 
of the State. The point that struck me was the 
pleasure which was taken by the mob in the 
sufferings which it was causing. It was drunk 
with cruelty. Here was little idea of a deterrent. 
Here was no question of racial prudence. From 
the point of view of the natural history of man- 



IX SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW 207 

kind, it put those white denizens of Georgia on 
a lower level than cannibals. 

It was America's glorious May, when she was 
pouring troops into Europe and winning the 
war ; hundreds of thousands of Negroes were 
clad in the uniform of the Army and were fighting 
for " freedom and justice " in Europe. The 
moral eloquence of the President was in all men's 
minds. America had the chance to take the 
moral leadership of the w^orld. 

But away back in Georgia the mob pursued 
its horrible way. At length they found the 
original Johnson, who had committed the murder, 
and he defended himself to the last in a house, 
with gun and revolver, and died fighting. His 
dead body was dragged at the back of a motor- 
car through the district, and then burned. 

The facts were brought to the attention of the 
Governor, and he made a statement denouncing 
mob-violence. But no one was ever brought to 
justice, though the names of the ringleaders were 
ascertained. No committee of inquiry was sent 
from Washington. In fact, the people of Georgia 
were allowed thus to smirch the glorious flag of 
the Republic and to lower the opinion of America 
in every capital of the world. For the facts of 
this story have been printed in circular form and 
distributed widely. It is undoubtedly a remark- 
able example of lynching. 

It seems rather strange that lynching crowds 
allow themselves to be photographed. Men and 
women and children in hundreds are to be seen 
in horrible pictures. One sees the summer mob 



2o8 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ix 

all in straw hats, the men without coats or waist- 
coats, the women in white blouses, all eager, 
some mirthful, some facetious. You can upon 
occasion buy these photographs as picture post- 
cards. The people are neither ashamed nor 
afraid. 

Northern Negroes go down to investigate 
lynchings, buy these photographs, bring them 
back to safe New York, and then print them off 
in circulars with details of the whole affair. 
Southern newspapers, though reticent, cannot 
forgo giving descriptions of lynchings ; every 
one is so much interested in them. Newspaper 
reports are also reprinted. There is no need to 
resort to hearsay in telling of the mob-murders 
of the South. They are heavily documented 
and absolutely authenticated. The United States 
Government cannot, for instance, prosecute such 
a Negro Association as the N.A.A.C.P. for the 
pamphlets it issues on lynchings, because it does 
no more than publish facts which have been 
publicly authenticated. If prosecuted, worse 
details would see light. Therefore these pam- 
phlets go forth. 

The first thing they do is tell the coloured 
people as a whole what has been happening. 
The Negroes of Alabama and Tennessee hear 
what has been happening in Georgia ; the 
Negroes of Florida and Louisiana hear what has 
taken place in Arkansas and Texas. Above all, 
the educated Northern Negroes know of it. 
Advanced papers such as the Crisis, the Chicago 
Dejender, and the Negro Messenger are giving 



IX SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW 209 

the Negro people as a whole a new consciousness. 
First of all in Christianity in the days of slavery 
and in their melancholy plantation music they 
obtained a collective race-consciousness. And 
now, through persecution on the one hand and 
newspapers on the other they are strengthening 
and fulfilling that consciousness. Destiny is being 
shaped in this race, and white men are the instru- 
ments who are shaping it. May it not emerge 
eventually as a sword, the sword of the wrath of 
the Lord ! 

I met many Whites who boasted of having 
taken part in a lynching, and I have met those 
who possessed gruesome mementoes in the shape 
of charred bones and grey dry Negro skin. I 
said they were fools. Actually to have the signs 
upon them ! Truly they were in the state of 
mind in which most men seem to be when fate 
is going to overtake them. They were proud 
of their " quick way with niggers," they justified 
it, they felt the wisdom of lynch could never be 
disproved. The matter to them was not worth 
arguing. They assumed that any one who wished 
to argue the point must have sympathy with the 
" niggers," and that was enough for them. It 
never occurred to them that one who doubted 
the wisdom of lynching might be actuated by 
sympathy or at least apprehension for them. 

I felt sorry for the white women of the South ; 
there will some day be a terrible reckoning against 
them. Their honour and safety are being made 
the pretext for terrible brutality and cruelty. 
Revenge, when it gains its opportunity, will 

p 



2IO CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ix 

therefore wreak itself upon the white woman 
most. Because in the name of the white woman 
they justify burning Negroes at the stake to-day, 
white women may be burned by black mobs 
by and by. There is no doubt that almost any 
insurrection of Negroes could ultimately be put 
down by force, and that it would be very bad 
for the Negroes and for their cause, but before 
it could be put down what might happen ? And 
should it synchronise with revolutionary disturb- 
ances among the Whites themselves, or with a 
foreign war ? 

I do not believe that there are real conspiracies 
of Negroes. But there is growing disaffection. 
The coloured people are a friendly, easy-going, 
fond-to-foolish folk by nature. But their affec- 
tion and devotion have been roughly refused. 
It has almost disappeared. Now we have the 
phenomenon of Negro mothers telling their httle 
children of the terrible things done by the white 
folk, and every Negro child is learning that the 
white man is his enemy. Every lynching, every 
auto-da-fe is secreting hate and the need for 
revenge in the Negro masses. Because the 
Negroes are weak and helpless and unorganised 
to-day, ilUterate often, stupid and unbalanced 
often, clownish and funny and unreUable, white 
folk think that it will always be so. But they are 
wrong. Whilst the industrialised masses of the 
Whites are certainly degenerating, the masses of 
the Negroes are certainly rising. Trouble is 
bound to arise and retribution terrible. What 
the low-brows of the South are teaching the 



IX SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW 211 

Negro he will be found to have learned, and as 
Shylock said about revenge — it will go hard but 
he betters the instruction. 

It may be thought that this is written with too 
much emphasis, and that this statement on the 
lynchings is too unmerciful to the white South. 
But I believe it is absolutely necessary. There 
are those who would be ready to do again the 
injustice which was done to the Whites in the 
South after the Civil War. When discussing 
these matters in the North I have been horror- 
struck by the opinion I have heard expressed. 
This is written in no partisan spirit, and I believe 
those who would rejoice in the destruction or 
punishment of the Southern white population are 
utterly wrong in heart. Punishment and revenge 
will only perpetuate the strife. But an iclair- 
cissementi a flood of daylight on these matters, a 
thorough shaking of these stupid people down 
below the line — a warning in such terrible terms 
as I have made, might save Black and White for 
the religion of love and a joy in God's creatures. 

It may come from a stranger, a complete out- 
sider, with more force than from an American. 
I have, however, found a Southerner who con- 
demned Georgia, the Roman Catholic Bishop 
Benjamin J. Kelly, who gave out a very serious 
warning in Savannah on the 2nd of November 
of last year. He said : 

'' It is hardly necessary to state that I am a 
Southerner. ... I warmly love the South ; and 
her story, her traditions, and her ideals are very 
dear to me. . . . But I fully recognise the 



212 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ix 

absolute justice of one charge which is made 
against her, and I look with grave apprehension 
to the future, for no people that disregards justice 
can ever have the blessing of God, and we are 
guilty of great injustice to tlie Negro. The 
Negro was brought here against his will ; he is 
here and he will remain here, and he is not treated 
with justice by us ; nay, I will say that he is 
often not treated with ordinary humanity. 

" Look at the statistics in our own State. 
Georgia stands first in the list of States in the 
matter of lynching. Has there ever been a man 
punished in this State for lynching a Negro .? 

" Lynching is murder, nothing else. 

*' Besides, is it not the fact that fair and im- 
partial justice is not meted out to white and 
coloured men alike. The courts of this State 
neither set the example, nor follow the example 
set them, and they make a great distinction 
between the white and the black criminal brought 
before them. The latter as a rule gets the full 
limit of the law. Do you ever hear of a street 
difficulty in which a Negro and a white man were 
involved which was brought before a judge, in 
which, no matter what were the real facts of the 
case, the Negro did not get the worst of it 

" Georgians boast of being a Christian people, 
and this year they are putting their hands into 
their pockets to raise millions to bring the light 
of Christianity, as understood by them, to some 
less favoured peoples in Europe. 

" I would like to know if it is entirely com- 
patible with Christian morality to treat the Negro 



IX SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW 213 

as he is treated here ? My belief is that the Negro 
and the white man were redeemed by the blood 
of Christ shed on the cross of Calvary, and that 
the Christian religion absolutely condemns in- 
justice to any one and forbids the taking of life. 

" To me the murder of a Negro is as much 
murder as the killing of a white man, and in each 
case Christian civilisation demands that the punish- 
ment of the crime should rest in the hands of the 
lawfully constituted authorities. 

" I have lived to see in Georgia an appeal 
made to the highest authority in the State for 
protection of the lives of coloured men, women, 
and children, answered by the statement that the 
Negro should not commit crimes ! The people 
of Georgia vest in certain officials the execu- 
tion of justice. Yet no lyncher has ever been 
punished here, and I regret to state that public 
sentiment seems to justify the conduct of the 
officials. 

" Only a short time ago I was reading the 
strange news of the race-riots in the Northern and 
Western cities. Thank God, we have had none 
of these riots in the South. Do you know the 
reason ? The only reason is the forbearance of 
the Negro. He has been treated with gross 
injustice ; he has not retaliated. In all these 
cases gross disregard for law and order are either 
the cause or the direct consequence of those 
disturbances. 

'* Are there not numbers of honest, law- 
abiding citizens of Georgia, who know that I 
am telling God's truth, and who will protest 



214 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES ix 

against this injustice to the Negro ? Is there not 
a just and fearless man on the bench in this State 
who will have the courage to announce that 
there shall be no difference in his court between 
the white man and the coloured man ? 

'' Injustice and disregard of law and the lawful 
conduct of affairs are the sure forerunners of 
anarchy and the loss of our liberty, and we are 
drifting in that direction. 

" The Negro will not stand asking for justice 
from Georgia laws or Georgia courts. He has 
been patient, and I hope he will remain so, but 
he well knows where the remedy lies, and he 
will very soon be found knocking at the door of 
the Federal Congress, asking protection. And 
Congress will hear him. 

'* If appeal to right, justice, to Christian 
morality, do not avail to put a stop to this in- 
justice to the Negro and protect him against the 
murderous lynchers, then Georgia will see Federal 
bayonets giving him protection." 

Such a voice is very rare. The warning is 
the more worth heeding. 



X 

EXODUS 

The Negro's refrain, *' Let my people go," 
continues to have a strong emotional appeal. 
Though devoted to the Southland in an intense 
sentimental way, for the Negro has an infinitely 
pathetic love of home, he has come sorrowfully 
to the conclusion — he must go away from here. 
It is strange, because home-sickness is almost a 
mania with the Negro. He relates himself to 
the white master's house where he worked, to the 
rude cabin where his family live, to his church, 
to the " home niggers," in an extravagant patho- 
logical way which has nothing to do with gratitude. 
Perhaps it is because as a people the slaves were 
uprooted out of a home in Africa, and they have 
a haunting melancholy in the hidden depths of 
their souls. I believe their childish idealisation 
of heaven in their hymns is fundamentally a sort 
of home-sickness. The Negro is not a natural 
nomad or vagrant like the Russian, the Jew, the 
Tartar. He must have been as geographically 
fixed in his native haunts in Africa. Judge, then, 
how great a disturbance must take place before 
the Negro en masse would be ready to emigrate. 

215 



2i6 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES x 

Yet so it is to-day. With consternation in their 
aspect, whole famiUes, whole communities, are 
waiting — to go North. And hundreds of thou- 
sands of them are on the move. Of course, it is 
not a complete change of scene. The North has 
its Negro masses too. One rather loses sight of 
them among the Whites, but they are there. 
And they do not cease to invite their unhappy 
brothers and sisters down South to throw up 
everything and come North. 

Whilst it is commonly said that the Negro 
cannot stand the colder climate of the North, 
there is, however, not much evidence to that 
effect. As their orators are proud to declaim — 
the only civilised man to accompany Peary to 
the actual North Pole was his trusted servant 
Mat Henson, a Negro. To some delicate 
Negroes, no doubt, a severe climate would be 
fatal, but that is true for Whites as well as Negroes. 
On the whole, the Northern air seems to be good 
for the Negro if he can stand it. The Negroes 
of New York and Chicago and Boston, and the 
Canadian Negroes, are firmer in flesh and in 
will than those who live in the South. And 
they are certainly more energetic. They yield 
more hope for the race as a whole than do the 
others. Perhaps one ought to discount this fact 
in the light of the extra prosperity and happi- 
ness of the Northern Negroes. There is nothing 
that will undermine the constitution more than 
terror and nervous depression. Security is the 
real Negro ozone. 

There has been during the last three years a 



X EXODUS 217 

steady migration of Negroes northward. This 
has been primarily due to the stoppage of foreign 
immigration and the consequent labour shortage 
in the districts which depended on the immigrant. 
The reasons why the Negro was ready to leave 
his Southern habitat have been summarised in 
the U.S. Department of Labour Report : ^ 

" General dissatisfaction with conditions, 
ravages of boll -weevil, floods, change of crop 
system, low wages, poor houses on plantations, 
poor school facilities, unsatisfactory crop settle- 
ments, rough treatment, cruelty of the law officers, 
unfairness in courts, lynching, desire for travel, 
labour agents, the Negro Press, letters from 
friends in the North, and finally, advice of white 
friends in the South where crops had failed." 

It is impossible to calculate the numbers with 
any likelihood of accuracy. Even the census of 
1920 will hardly indicate what has taken place — 
for no one can say what allowance ought to be 
made for natural increase in the last ten years. 
But the Insurance Companies reckon that from 
May 19 1 6 to September 19 17 between thirty- 
five and forty thousand Negroes left Georgia. 
Perhaps the net loss to the South has been a 
quarter of a million, the majority young, single 
men and women. Some certainly put the figure 
higher. The movement has slowed down owing 
to the after-the-war stagnancy in trade, the very 
bad housing conditions in the North, the race- 
riot in Chicago, and other retarding influences. 

^ Negro Migration in igid-iy. Government Printing Office, Washing- 
ton, 1 91 9. 



21 8 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES x 

With a revival of trade it may go on more rapidly. 
Certainly whenever a countryside in the South 
is visited by some special act of violence there is 
a tendency for the coloured population to flee. 
Unfortunately, the lot of migrants of the type of 
Negroes is always a hard one. It is difficult to 
settle down in a new community. Irregular 
habits bring disease. Provincial dulness makes 
it difficult to find a job or to evade sharpers. 
Unfortunately also, Negroes are not by nature 
altruistic, not clannish like the Jews. They do 
not help one another in distress as much as poor 
Whites do. So many who flee northward in- 
evitably come to grief. 

It is urged in the South that the North is not 
entirely appreciative of the influx of so many 
Negroes. But, on the other hand, it is alleged 
that the large northern companies sent their 
agents into every State in the South, seeking 
labour. It was certainly useful to the companies. 
And although the loose and nondescript un- 
employed immigrants were guilty of a number 
of crimes, it is generally held that those who 
found employment proved very steady and 
reliable. The Negro proved a safe man in the 
munition factory, and it was found he could do a 
white man's job in a mine and in the steel works. 

The employers of labour were well pleased. 
But there was a section of the community that 
was not pleased, and that was the working class — 
the poor Whites once more — who saw in Negro 
migration an influx of non-Union labour depress- 
ing wages, and lowering the standard of living. 



X EXODUS 219 

The working-men speedily quarrelled with the 
Negro — seeing in him the oft -encountered 
strike-breaker. Those who have gone through 
the Negro district of Chicago with its filthy 
ramshackle frame-buildings, occupied by Negro 
families, a family to a room, know how appalling 
is the aspect of the Negro there. In the old days 
the white population took it as a matter of course, 
as they did so many other things in this evil 
industrial conglomeration so aptly called the 
Jungle. But too much competition and too 
many unfamiliar gloomy Negro faces on the 
streets caused the nervous shock which accounted 
for the Chicago riots, begun strangely enough 
not by a Negro attack but by a white youth 
knocking a Negro boy off a raft on the lake and 
drowning him. The three days' free fight which 
ensued was one of the most disillusioning episodes 
in the history of Northern friendship for the 
Negro. 

Nevertheless, Negro leaders still cry, " Come 
North ! " 



There have always been those who thought 
that the Negro problem could be solved by 
encouraging migration. The exodus to the 
North was hailed as a partial liquidation of the 
Southern trouble. Doubtless, an even distri- 
bution of Negroes over the whole of the country 
would put them in the desired minority as 
regards Whites. Outnumbered by ten to one 
they would never seem to threaten to grasp 



220 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES x 

electoral control or be in a position to use physical 
force with a chance of success. But these are 
highly theoretical suppositions. Even at the 
present great rate of exodus it would take 
hundreds of years to even them out, and there 
is no reason to think that the emigrants would 
distribute themselves easily. They would prob- 
ably crowd more and more into the large cities 
like Chicago and Pittsburg, and be as much 
involved in evil conditions there as they were in 
the South. 

Another popular misconception is that it is 
possible to find a home for the Negro in Africa, 
and get rid of him that way. Men say airily, 
'* Pack them all off to Liberia," as they used to say, 
*' Send the Jews back to Palestine." It is not a 
practical proposal. Abraham Lincoln held this 
view, and he opened negotiations with foreign 
Governments in order to find suitable territory 
for Negro colonisation, but he gave up the idea 
when General Butler, who investigated the matter 
for him, convinced him that the Negro birth-rate 
was greater than any possible rate of transport. 

What was true in 1865 ought to be more 
obvious to-day. It is a physical impossibility 
to transport those twelve millions and their 
progeny to Africa. If a large instalment were 
taken, would they not perish from starvation and 
disease ? The eyes of the world would be on the 
United States doing such a thing, and they would 
be involved in a terrible scandal. 

But, indeed, the first to cry out, '* Give us 
back our niggers," would be the South. For 



X 



EXODUS 221 



her whole prosperity has a foundation of Negro 
labour. Take away the black population, and 
the white farmers and traders and financiers 
would be so impoverished that they also would 
want to emigrate to Africa. 

In a material way would not the whole con- 
tinent of America suffer greatly ? You cannot 
withdraw twelve millions from the labouring 
class, and go on as before. It is a ridiculous 
solution. The only reason for giving it place in 
serious criticism is that so many people nurse 
the delusion that the problem can be solved by 
deportation. It stands in the way when people 
would otherwise face the facts honestly : our 
forefathers introduced the Negro into our midst, 
he is here to stay, and we have to find out what is 
best for him and best for the White, taking the 
facts as they are. 

One good purpose has, however, been served 
by the encouragement of Negro emigration back 
to Africa. It has kept the Negro in touch with 
his original home. It has broadened the Negro's 
outlook and started a Negro Zionism — a senti- 
ment for Africa. The Negro loves large con- 
ceptions — the universal tempts his mind, as it 
tempts that of the Slav. In short, Liberianism 
has possessed the Negro of a world-movement. 



XI 



IN NORTH FLORIDA AND NEW 
ORLEANS 

Lynching is more associated with the cotton- 
growing districts than with others. It is not a 
fact that the farther south you go the more 
violent the temper of the people. South-Eastern 
Georgia, where the main business is lumbering and 
rice-growing, has a better record than the cotton- 
growing interior. The cotton-planters are aware 
of this, and it is not uncommon to curse the cotton 
and wish they could turn to something else. 
Cotton is not a popular industry. In the old days 
it bound slavery upon the planter and the Negro 
— for cotton necessitates cheap labour — and now 
it keeps the Negro down and perpetuates an 
ungenerous type of life. 

I worked down the Atlantic coast to Bruns- 
wick and Jacksonville, preparing in mind for 
some sort of joyful surprise when I should enter 
Florida. Brunswick is one of the oldest ports 
in Georgia. As far as records go it has never 
been disgraced by a lynching. Its background 
of industry is chiefly timber, and the eye looks in 
vain for a cotton-bale or a cotton-blossom. It 

222 



XI IN NORTH FLORIDA 223 

is a peaceful little city, all sand and low palm 
and scrub, with innumerable grasshoppers and 
butterflies even in December. An open-streeted 
port, with placid happy Negroes and no race- 
movement of any kind. 

At Jacksonville one experiences a complete 
change of air. It is the climate of Florida, and 
the difference between cotton and fruit. The 
difference also between much sombre business and 
some gilded pleasure. When the rich from the 
North step out of their cars in Florida and take 
their ease at Palm Beach they naturally would 
not care to be mixed up in the South's pet sport. 
Lynchings are bad business in Florida, for if 
the things occurred there that take place in the 
neighbouring State of Georgia it would certainly 
frighten away many polite and wealthy visitors. 
As regards the white woman also, the Floridans 
do not so assiduously libel the Negro as do the 
Georgians. Ladies need not be afraid to visit 
the watering-places ; the coloured man is said 
to have his passions well under control. Most of 
the trouble that does occur is in more obscure 
places, and more in northern than in southern 
Florida. 

Jacksonville is a large port with a population 
bordering on a hundred thousand. Naturally 
there are masses of poor as well as numbers of 
rich. There is employment for a great quantity 
of Negro labour, and on the streets one may 
observe the characteristics of a large maritime 
city. What strikes an Englishman visiting these 
Atlantic ports, Baltimore, Norfolk, Savannah, 



224 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xi 

Jacksonville, when compared with Hull, Cardiff, 
Liverpool, London Docks, etc., is the absence 
of that somewhat agitating phenomenon of black 
dock-labourers walking out with poor white girls. 
You may see them any evening in England. As 
a natural and instinctive thing, most Whites 
resent it, and street fights in England are the 
not uncommon result. In America, walking out 
with Negroes either innocently or otherwise is 
impossible. Riots and lynchings do not arise 
from that reason, but from alleged individual 
assaults upon white women. It should be re- 
marked that womanhood in America is practically 
idealised. The public as a whole is disinclined 
to tolerate a woman smoking or drinking, or 
bathing in inadequate attire, or even " spooning." 
It would not occur to a poor white factory girl 
as even possible to walk out with a Negro. Her 
moral self-esteem is higher than that of her 
English sister. The girls who are seen walking 
out with Negroes in London belong more often 
to a class which is economically or morally 
submerged. 

The Jacksonville Negroes were in a state of 
considerable anxiety and ferment when I was 
there. Not because of white woman trouble, 
but in anticipation of a riot breaking out on one 
plea or another. A bad lynching had occurred 
in the preceding September. A drunken White 
quarrelled with a Negro taxi-driver, threatened 
him and exasperated him, whereupon a conflict 
ensued in which the White was killed. The 
white mob then rounded up every Negro 



XI IN NORTH FLORIDA 



225 



chauffeur in the city and terrified a great number 
of homes, because the lyncher does not care 
whether he lynches the right Negro or not, as 
long as one of them suffers. And in this case 
two paid the penalty. Undoubtedly the horror 
and terror of being taken by the mob is the worst 
of an execution of this kind. 

The Negroes were very suspicious of white 
men, and I did not make much progress enquir- 
ing into their ways of life. I found, however, a 
considerably inflated prosperity of churches, due 
to the philanthropy of Northern visitors, and a 
well-to-do black proletariat working in the ship- 
building yard and the docks. Nearly all the 
work done by them was, however, unskilled, 
and they were only taken as substitutes on 
skilled work. Substitutes earned as much as 
seven dollars a day. There was a " coloured " 
bank, and, as at Birmingham, a so-called " sky- 
scraper " of six stories accommodating all and 
sundry of trades and professions. Once more, 
successful drug-stores and burial-parlours, and 
a Mme. Nettie Price with Beauty establishment. 
I called at the War Camp Community Club for 
coloured soldiers and sailors — not so enterprising 
as the one I visited at Norfolk — but the right 
sort of institution, well used in a proper and 
discreet way. 

I crossed the neck of the land to Pensacola, 
passing through Tallahassee, a district where fine 
leaves of tobacco for cigar-wrapping are grown 
under trellis. Orange groves hung in plenteous 
fruit just ripe to pick, changing from green to 

Q 



226 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xi 

gold. Pensacola is a port with a great history of 
its own involving Spanish, British, French, Ameri- 
can history. Its background is of orange-groves 
and pecan orchards. The pecan nut, a refine- 
ment from the walnut, is so prized in the rest of 
the United States that one can make a good living 
and save money on a planting of a hundred or 
so trees. The main street of Pensacola leading 
down to the long pier is very picturesque, with 
its mariners' grocers and marine stores. A 
passenger vessel plies weekly to Mobile, the great 
fruit port of southern Alabama, and it is possible 
to get a passage on cargo boats going to New 
Orleans. Before the war there was much mari- 
time traffic, but few of the vessels which sailed 
away to do transport and other war duties have 
returned. 

Pensacola claims to be the oldest white city 
in the United States, disputing the matter with 
St. Augustine, Jacksonville, and is taking the 
question very seriously in view of any celebration. 
It is not an important place, but is building 
towards its own supposed greatness, has a fine 
new railway station and huge white stone Post 
Office and mammoth hotel. These buildings 
are puzzling in a town where life seems so 
placid. 

Here was a bad lynching for rape a year ago, 
and a Negro was burned to death. Repre- 
sentations were made to the Governor of Florida 
on the matter. The Governor, Sidney I. Catts, 
replied that he made every effort to keep down 
lynching in the State, but he could not bring 



XI IN NEW ORLEANS 227 

the lynchers to trial, as the citizenship of the 
State would not stand for it. Apparently he con- 
doned the burning of the Negro, because it was 
a clear case of sexual wantonness and violence 
on the part of one of the Negro race. It is 
somewhat surprising that the chief officer of the 
law should thus fail to uphold the law. Who 
is to uphold it if he do not ? A contrast this, to 
the heroic behaviour of Mayor Smith of Omaha ! 



Nature did not intend the Gulf of Mexico as 
a frame for lynching, nor that those happy blue 
skies should look down on human candles. If 
ever there was a serene and happy place in the 
world it is here, and there is scope for all races to 
live and to let live. Health is on the shoulder of 
the winds that blow ; fish and fruit and grain 
and sugar are abundant. Are not the harbours 
bobbing with grape-fruit upon occasion — does 
not every boy suck the natural sugar from the 
cane ; the luscious cantaloupe fills with the sun, 
peaches and nectarines swell to double sizes of 
lusciousness and sweetness. Visitors, moreover, 
bring a plenitude of dollars and scatter them 
as they go. Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Pensacola, 
Mobile, New Orleans — they are more blest by 
Nature than other cities of the South. 

Personally I preferred New Orleans. It is 
the finest and most interesting city in which to 
live. It is by far the largest city of the South, 
Atlanta coming second, and Birmingham, Ala- 
bama, third. It is the great port of the vast 



228 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xi 

Mississippi River, and is the head of what was 
a mighty river traffic. It faces south, and is 
more related to France and Spain and the Indies 
than to Britain and Scandinavia and the North 
Atlantic. Like New York, it has also a strange 
mixture of races, but they are southern races. 

Of course it has been notorious as a city of 
pleasure and fast living. Every one says to the 
tourist, " When you get to New Orleans you'll 
see ' life,' " by which is meant the life-wasting 
of the immoral. Its reputation in that respect 
resembled that of Cairo, and the curious, even 
if they did not wish to taste, could pay to be 
shown round and thus satisfy their eyes by 
looking upon evil. The money which flows 
southward from the pockets of the rich through- 
out the winter has no doubt helped to keep the 
red light burning. Now all has changed however. | 
The various vice-crusades and the enactment of 
Prohibition have combined to bring New Orleans 
to the moral level of other cities of America. 
There is a violent opposition to the Puritan 
movement in many sections of the population, 
and the law is flouted very often, but New 
Orleans, nevertheless, has ceased to present any 
particular interest to the low pleasure-seeker or 
those of morbid imagination. The city will be 
the better for it. It is a wonderful place. The 
inhabitants after all were not mainly engaged 
in the business of pleasure, but in honest trade, 
and they increase ever. New Orleans is the 
metropolis of the South, and has a vast and grow- 
ing commerce which is rendered picturesque by I 



XI IN NEW ORLEANS 229 

the glamour of that abundance of Nature in the 
midst of which she is founded. 

One pictures New Orleans as a city of men 
in white, with white hats as well as white clothes, 
men smoking heavy black cigars, or sauntering 
idly in the company of exotic-looking ladies ; a 
city of wide open streets and white houses, of 
many open-air cafes and garden theatres and 
luxuriant parks, a place certainly of fashion and 
gaiety and elegant living. But what I found 
on my first impression was an unpainted city, 
a mass of houses mostly wooden, but mouldering, 
pallid, and peeling, of every hue of decay. Some 
walls seemed ready to fall out, some ready to 
fall in. Man of the period 1920, European, 
industrialised, diminutive, clad in sober garb, 
pursued the common way of life. The cheap- 
lunch shop, hall-mark of American civilisation, 
identified the city as American. There were the 
usual lofty ramshackle caravanserai with Negro 
bell-boys and the clatter of ice-water, the usual 
public gardens strewn with the newspapers of 
the day. But though it was winter the weather 
was hot. The atmosphere was dense and warm, 
and the closeness was not dissipated even by the 
wind when it came. A gale blew in from the 
Gulf. It scattered warm rain in the city, it 
rushed through multitudes of palm trees in the 
suburbs outside. 

The American part of the city is vast and 
residential and conventional. The business 
section expresses business ; the home section is 
up-town and removed from the life of the centre. 



230 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xi 

If there were only this " new " part nothing 
would distinguish New Orleans from other 
cities. But it has its vieux carri in which its 
history is written, the old, or French, part of the 
town. The American side is continually re- 
building itself, but the French remains as it was. 
It has not torn itself down and got rebuilt in 
modern style. Its great public place is Jackson 
Square, flanked by the market, and that is 
beautifully prim and French, but it is foiled by 
ugly railings and municipal sheds. Nevertheless, 
it holds one more than does the architectural 
grandeur of Lafayette Square in the American 
half, with its stupendously grand Post Office 
and Town Hall ; and the subdued simplicity of 
Dauphine Street and Chartres and Bienville and 
many others is better than any quantity of the 
new, and takes one back in mind to Old Paris 
and Old London. With all its Creole restaurants 
and cheap markets and French churches it 
reminded me forcibly of Soho in London, but 
of course it is larger and grander. 

Once a tongue of the Mississippi River, a long 
and narrow strip of torpid water, divided the 
old town from the new. Now it has been filled 
up, though where the water was it is in some 
places green with grass. Six lines of electric 
cars and four streams of other traffic go up and 
down Canal Street, as it is now called. It is a 
great highway, finer in some respects than the 
Nevsky Prospect in Petrograd, certainly broader. 
On one side of it and down to the water edge it 
is definitely and undoubtedly old ; on the other 



XI IN NEW ORLEANS 231 

it is definitely and undoubtedly new. On one 
side is reality and matter of fact, on the other 
glamour and colour ; on one you make or lose 
money, on the other you have or miss adventures ; 
one is prose, the other poetry ; and it is well 
understood in New Orleans. You work in one, 
you live a conventional home life in one, but in 
the other you seek pleasure and adventures away 
from home. Not that you cannot dine on the 
new side, where there are costly and luxurious 
hotels, but an interesting and characteristic story 
might be written of a man who stayed too long 
over his wine in the new part, and then, late at 
night, strayed across this broad dark Lethe, which 
divides old from new, to lose himself on the farther 
side — an adventure and a dream. 

The foreign streets are of red brick and painted 
wood, with vine-wreathed verandahs and balconies. 
The houses are crowded within. Red -painted 
wooden doors unclose on the street and show a 
bed occupying half a tiny room, and perhaps a 
Creole lady in bed. There is not much squeam- 
ishness in the Creoles. French is spoken every- 
where, and often EngUsh is not understood. 
Most of the people are Catholic, and are related 
spiritually to " Mother Church." Old St. Louis 
Cathedral with its spiky tower is full of people 
of a Sunday morning, and the service is so 
perfunctory that it is clear it is no mission church 
but one long established and sure. There are 
monastical institutions, even for the Negroes. 
Whilst Irish Catholics do not like Negroes, the 
French and Spanish do. Specially interesting is 



232 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xi 

the Convent of the Sacred Heart, with its black 
Mother Superior and its happy placid Negro 
Catholicism. The best of the Negroes call 
themselves Negro Creoles. The Creoles are the 
cross-breed of French and Spaniard and their 
descendants. Strictly speaking, no Negroes are 
Creoles, but the descendants of the slaves of the 
Creoles, and in general the French and Spanish- 
speaking Negroes call themselves Negro Creoles, 
and are generally indulged in the appellation. 
Creoles, indeed, have not much prejudice against 
colour, being much mixed themselves, and in 
any case of French extraction, and the French 
have never had much sense of racial distinction. 
To speak French is a sign of belonging to Society 
in New Orleans. The opening of the Opera 
season at the French Opera House (lately burned 
down) used to be the event of the winter, and every 
one of importance must be present. The next sign 
of good taste is to know cuisine and to be able to 
differentiate the delicaces and the subtleties of the 
famous Creole chefs. 

I visited the Mayor, Catholic, but of German 
name. He could not easily have kept his mayor- 
alty with such a name in England. But here 
he was very popular. He was a human pyramid 
in long voluminous morning coat, smoking a 
cigar as he worked, but walking with a ponderous 
and poised walk, and exhibiting a front of truly 
mayoral proportions. He said, concerning the 
Negroes, '* We have no trouble with them here ; 
we get on very well together. They are outside 
politics ; that makes it much easier. If they 



XI IN NEW ORLEANS 233 

had the power to vote, of course it would be 
different." New Orleans is one of those places 
where a Negro's grandfather must have voted if 
he is to vote, and he must prove that his grand- 
father voted. I demurred to the Mayor. " The 
Negroes seem very suspicious of the Whites, and 
hostile," said I. He thought not. It was evi- 
dently his set policy to have that point of view. 
Politically he could not afford to be strongly 
interested in the Negro ferment. For although 
the disenfranchised Negro population thought 
him friendly to them, the Whites also thought 
him " sound on the nigger question." No white 
man who expressed sympathy for the Negro could 
possibly succeed in Louisiana politics. There was 
proceeding whilst I was there a violent election 
campaign for the Governorship of the State, and 
it was curious that, though the Negro could 
take little personal part in the choosing of the 
Governor, he nevertheless took almost first 
place in the political discussions. Soundness on 
the Negro question seemed to be the chief 
test of candidacy. A man who might betray 
lynchers to justice or anything of that kind 
was evidently feared by the white population. 
Nevertheless, as I have said, the Creoles were 
on friendly terms with the Negroes. It is the 
Anglo-Saxon and Irish - American section of 
the population, the undifferentiated southern 
Whites, who determine the way of politics here, 
as elsewhere in the South. It is likely that if 
the Creoles were left to themselves with the 
Negro population they would grant them full 



234 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xi 

rights, not only in the Courts and in suffrage, 
but socially. The Negroes know this, and are, 
therefore, on very good terms with the French- 
speaking population. 

Nevertheless, it must be said that but for a 
handful of leaders the Negro population is more 
dull, more impassive and ignorant than elsewhere. 
A black proletariat of a hundred thousand ought 
to be able to raise on its broad base a fine column 
of intelligence and business. There ought to be 
large and flourishing groups of doctors and lawyers 
and shop-keepers, but here, as at Birmingham, 
there is the usual Insurance Society's building, 
which is all - in - all. And Negro insurance is 
little more than the organisation of burying 
clubs, with the Negro undertakers as prime bene- 
ficiaries. The biggest Negro business throughout 
the South is connected with burying Negroes. 
It is sad, but it is characteristic of this era of their 
development. New Orleans has its " Pythian 
Building," its temple of the Knights of Pythias, 
of which the debonair Mr. Green is Grand 
Master, not only for the State of Louisiana, but 
for the world. This is the civic centre of the 
Negroes' life in New Orleans, and like the Penny 
Bank Building at Birmingham and its sister 
building at Jacksonville, houses many activities. 
The Pythian Temple of New Orleans is said to 
be the finest Negro building in the United States. 
It is a fine edifice, and in America business is 
judged much more by the building it inhabits 
than in Europe. An integral part of the Temple 
is a very useful theatre, not a cinema hall, but 



XI IN NEW ORLEANS 235 

a genuine stage for the " legitimate " drama. 
Here, no doubt, the Knights of Pythias appear in 
full regalia and parade to do the pseudo-ritual 
of the Society. But the theatre is used for all 
manner of purposes. 

I was present one Sunday afternoon at a 
local meeting of the National Association. The 
southern White is opposed to the Association, and 
would do much to thwart it if he knew much 
about it. But the southern Whites do not mix 
with Negro intellectuals, and are content to live 
in that paradise indicated by the Mayor — We 
get on all right with them down here. 

When, however, a bad lynching takes place 
the local white population soon hears of the 
National Association. Representatives are sent 
from New York to investigate the facts. In 
such cases facts are the last things the white 
community wish brought to light, and then the 
National Association is discovered and roundly 
abused. Its representatives are sometimes white, 
which makes them more dangerous from a 
Southern point of view. Attempts are made to 
" railroad " them — run them out of town. 

The case of Mr. Shillady in Texas must be 
mentioned here. He acted as secretary for this 
militant association, and as a white man has done 
valuable work for his country by investigating 
and authenticating the details of mob-murders. 
Texas has a bad record for lynching and law- 
lessness. The Texan people, however, would 
not have Shillady, and he was actually tlirashed 
publicly by a judge and a constable. It was done 



236 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xi 

in front of the Driscoll Hotel Austin, where 
Shillady was staying. Having been assaulted 
in this way, he was put on a Northern train and 
told to leave it at his peril. The judge remains 
still judge, the constable still remains a constable 
— if he be not now a sergeant or inspector. 
When we sing " Down Texas way " that is what 
it means. 

The local meeting this Sunday afternoon at 
New Orleans was of a quarrelsome character. A 
well-known and devoted Negro leader had been 
accused in a Negro paper of " selling out the 
coloured folk " at St. Louis. There had been 
great enthusiasm in the forming of what is called 
the " American Legion," a national club of all who 
had served or worn an American uniform in the 
Great War. Negro membership of the Legion was 
apparently being barred in the South, and some 
wrong-headed Negro journalist had accused an old 
Creole Negro of attending the St. Louis inaugural 
gathering of the Legion and agreeing that Negro 
soldiers and sailors should be excluded. 

A violent personal quarrel banged from man 
to man. As I was asked to speak I told them I 
thought they could ill afford to quarrel among 
themselves. Nevertheless, I had noticed a 
marked disposition to quarrel among the educated 
Negroes. Loyalty to one another was not one 
of their characteristics. No people could do 
much who did not prize unity more than discord. 
Whilst so many were against them all, how 
absurd to spend an afternoon quarrelling with one 
another ! 



XI IN NEW ORLEANS 237 

This was warmly applauded, though no doubt 
one might as well sit in Canute's chair and '* bid 
the main flood bate its usual height," as bid them 
cease to quarrel. They brought the fighting 
instinct out of Africa, and still longed to wield 
the battle-axe. 

Besides the Pythian Temple block, New 
Orleans has also a sort of South Street, a cheap 
line of shops with " swell-toggery " for Negroes, 
Negro suit-pressing establishments, barbers, and 
the like, pawn - shops, and what not. This is 
South Rampart, and on it is the People's Drug 
Store, a hive of Negro life. Up above the store, 
Mrs. Camille Cohen-Bell operates an Insurance 
Company, and her father, W. L. Cohen, runs 
for what it is worth in opinion (it cannot count 
much in votes) the Negro Republican Party. 

During a fortnight in New Orleans I visited 
frequently this pleasant company of Negro 
Creoles, the well-educated Mrs. Bell, who loved 
to speak French, and her ebullient father. The 
place was haunted by undertakers. It appeared 
that when a Negro was insured in the Company 
he was allotted to an undertaker in case of death. 
Undertakers, therefore, became very anxious 
when clients moved out of their parish. If any 
one fell sick away from home, and there was the 
likelihood of his dying and being buried by a 
stranger, the fret of the local buriers was comical. 

I met here an advanced Negro lady who 
gave out very positive views on morality. The 
presence of a white man was perhaps a challenge 
to her mind. Some white woman called Jean 



238 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xi 

Gordon had been giving a missionary address 
to the Negroes on moral purity and proper 
behaviour at a large Baptist church. I did not 
hear Jean Gordon, but her black antagonist was 
so forceful I asked her to give me a statement of 
what she thought. This was her answer to Jean 
Gordon : 

"... Jean Gordon states that every young 
coloured girl knows no white man may marry 
her under the law, and if she brings into the 
world an illegitimate child she is not fit to be a 
mother. All very true. Now, I daresay that 
every young coloured girl is aware of this fact, 
but judging from the way the white men run 
after these coloured girls, either they (the white 
men) are in ignorance of the law, or it is their 
object flagrantly to disobey it. There is one 
thing I wish all white men and women to bear 
in mind, when they refer to illicit relations of 
white men and black women, and vice versa — 
it is this : the laws of this Southland are made by 
white men, and no sooner have they made these 
laws than they get busy finding ways to break 
them and evading punishment for so doing. It 
is a well-known fact that no Negro woman seeks 
the attentions of a white man — rather is the shoe 
on the other foot, and Negro women have a very i 
hard time making white keep in their places. 
However, the attraction is not confined to the 
men of the white race, for good-looking coloured 
men have as hard a time as the good-looking ,1 
coloured women. So, it seems to me that if Jean I 
Gordon should address an audience of white men 



XI IN NEW ORLEANS 239 

and women, and plead with them to teach their 
boys, husbands, brothers, and fathers the necessity 
of respecting the laws, and the women of all 
races, then, coloured young women would have 
no trouble keeping their virtue and their morals. 
All honour is due to the Negro women, for no 
one knows better than Jean Gordon herself the 
terrible pressure brought against them by white 
men who seek to force their attentions on them. 
The wonder of it is that so many of them are able 
to hold out against such odds, but God is in His 
Heaven and does not sleep. So, I say, let the 
white women get busy and teach morality and 
respect to their own, and we shall see how that 
will work out. As for illegitimate children, 
the bearing of these is not confined to women of 
the Negro race by any means. The white infant 
asylums will give ample proof of this. We know 
full well that a white man may not marry a 
coloured girl in the South, but we wonder just 
why it is he does not marry the white girl whom 
he seduces ? I am able to give a partial reason — 
THE FORCE OF HABIT ! The white man 
has grown so accustomed to seducing Negro 
women and getting by with it, that the virtue 
of his own women has come to mean nothing to 
him. 

" We now come to Jean Gordon's statement 
relative to ' wild stories are being circulated that 
the Negro won the great world war . . .' No 
intelligent Negro can claim that the Negro won 
the world war, but every intelligent man, woman, 
and child, in this country and on the other side. 



240 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xi 

is aware that the Negro did his share in winning 
it over there, and did his full share over here. 
The Negro has participated in every war in 
which this country has engaged, and at no time 
did he retreat or show the yellow streak. No 
one can cite an instance where a Negro protested 
against going to the front. Against propaganda 
that was overwhelming the Negro remained loyal. 
The first Negroes to set foot on French soil were 
from Louisiana — Longshoremen : they were not 
soldiers, true, but they did what they were sent 
to do, and did it well. Very few white regiments 
from Louisiana saw the firing-line, yet they are 
all soldiers. No doubt, had they been sent to 
the front, they would have fought, but so would 
every black citizen of the United States. How- 
ever, if it is true that ' comparatively few of them 
fought when the total of the millions of white 
men who died in that struggle is considered,' the 
reason for that is that the South did its level best 
to keep the Negro out of the war as a soldier. 
And, it must be known, that every white man who 
fought and died was not an American ! Every 
black man who fought did his part creditably, as 
has ever been the case. Whole Negro regiments 
were decorated by the French ; and bear in mind 
that among those who were the first to be decor- 
ated by the French were American Negroes ! 
As for the fighting qualities of the Negro, all 
I need do is to refer any ' doubting Thomas ' to 
Xon Hill. Nothing more need be said. And 
I repeat for all concerned that while the Negro 
did not win the world war, he did his share in 



XI IN NEW ORLEANS 241 

helping to win it^ over there, and he and his women 
who remained over here helped to win it by 
labouring and giving funds. . . . The Negro 
dug trenches, he fought, he died on the battlefield, 
he gave of his money and his labour over here, 
and his women gave of their money and labour — 
Did the Negro help win the great world war ? 
ril say he did I 1 1 Will any one say he did 
not ? If any one has done more, let him come 
forward. 

" Before concluding, I wish to ask Jean Gordon 
just why it is she and the women of the South 
are so bitterly opposed to giving suffrage to 
Negro women ? Do they fear us ? Yea, they 
need to fear us, for we have made up our minds 
that we are going to help our men of the South 
get their rights, and Jean Gordon, being a 
woman, is fully aware that when a woman wills 
a thing, it is as good as done. The Negro men 
are going to come out on top, and their women 
are going to see to it. The Negro men are going 
to learn to protect their women from the snares of 
white men, and their women are going to help 
them do this, too. . . . No longer does a Negro 
woman consider it an honour to have a white 
man for a ' friend ' — a lover — gradually have we 
made her understand that it is an insult, and she 
now tells her father, brother, or husband, as the 
case may be, and it is up to this man to defend 
the virtue of his female relative, in the same way 
the white man defends his. No more do we 
hear a nice-looking coloured boy bragging that 
such and such a white woman is quite crazy for 

R 



242 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xi 

him, for we have shown him that her affection 
for him is likely to lead him into trouble, so, 
having quite a variety of colours to choose from 
in the women of his own race (thanks to the white 
man for that) the Negro boy runs along with the 
kind of girl who pleases him, and keeps out of 
trouble. Very often though, the white does not 
let him stay out of trouble, — there are so many 
ways devised by these nice white people to hurt 
the Negro who is peaceably bent. The Negro 
has been patient, true, but we all know there is 
an end to all patience. I hope the time has come 
when the whites of this section will take up more 
time in improving themselves and less time in 
seeing the error of our ways. We both of us 
have much to do, but we Negroes are aware of 
it, and are anxious to improve ourselves, but we 
are unable to take pattern after those who are 
more in need of lessons than we. The Negro 
is bound to come out on top — even though he 
is in a hopeless minority — Right will ever and 
always crush Might, for reference, see William 
Hohenzollern ! " 

By this sulphurous little smoke one may know 
of subterranean fire. When the earthquake comes 
the Jean Gordons will fall down and the new 
Negro woman will stand forth. White society 
in places like New Orleans may one day be over- 
thrown unless it can live for ideals and reform its 
institutions. Much depends on the law which 
is corrupted and much on the churches now in 
decay. 



XII 

THE NEW MIND OF THE NEGRO 

Resentment is the main characteristic of the 
Negro forward movement. In endeavouring to 
understand the Negro mind a maximum is 
gained by answering the question : What does it 
mean to have been a slave ? Analysis of racial 
consciousness at once brings to light in the case 
of the Negro a slave mentality. He has been 
pre-dispositioned by slavery. 

To have been a slave, or to be the child of a 
slave, means to have an old unpaid grudge in the 
blood, to have, in fact, resentment either smoulder- 
ing or abeyant or militant. If it does not develop 
in the slave it will develop in the child of the 
slave or the child of the child. It may not 
take a violent form. Certain circumstances, such 
as prosperity, have power to neutralise it. On 
the other hand, certain other circumstances have 
power to bring it more rapidly to a head. The 
virus feeds on grievances, will even feed on 
imaginary grievances, but most certainly will 
grow apace on real grievances. In all serious- 
ness, there is nothing like burning people alive 
for bringing out active spite and hate. Because 

243 



244 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xii 

of burning and lynching, the whole of American 
Negrodom swells larger in resentment, day by 
day and moon by moon. 

The character of ex-slave and the child of one 
who was a slave is aptly shown by the way some 
Negroes treat animals, in the way also in which 
they treat those Negroes who happen to come 
under them. 

It is appalUng to hear a Negro say to a horse 
struggling with a heavy load, " I'll take a stick 
and beat you to death," and to realise that the 
voice of the tyrannous master is being repeated 
as by a human phonograph. If some American 
Negroes are more cruel to animals, though 
quick to understand their ways, it is because they 
conceive of themselves as masters and the animals 
as their slaves. 

For whilst a man is a slave he is learning in 
one way to be a master. A slave's children are 
more ready to be tyrannous than the children of 
one who never has been a slave. When a slave is 
being flogged he is learning racially how to 
flog when he gets a chance. His children will 
have a flogging spirit in them. When he is 
being tortured he is learning how to torture. 

The Anglo - Saxon looks upon the animals 
almost as friends and equals. He loves his horse 
and his dog, he honours the fox and the bear. 
Not so the Negro, the Russian peasant, the Jew. 
They have an attitude toward the animals which 
is quite other. And towards human beings in 
their power or employ they often have a point 
of view which is hateful. The peasant workman 



XII THE NEW NEGRO MIND 245 

in the power of the kulak peasant, the Jewish 
seamstress in the power of the Jew who owns the 
" sweat shop," the Negro workman under the 
Negro boss or foreman ! To be in the power of 
a master is bad, but to be in the power of a slave 
is so much worse ! 

In a land where the slave class is gaining power 
there is therefore a great deal of resentment in 
the air. America has it ; Russia has it. To- 
day all the world has it. In the Great War 
the youth of almost every country underwent 
the yoke of military slavery, and what resent- 
ment there is against the masters ! In Germany, 
where that slavery was worst, it raised Spartacus 
from death. And who was this Spartacus who 
has suddenly become a type and given a name to 
a movement ? Himself a slave, he led an in- 
surrection of slaves against Rome. The masters 
defeated him and killed him, and the heads of 
hundreds of his followers were impaled on spikes 
upon all roads which led to Rome — a warning 
and a witness to all other slaves of that and other 
times. Bitter and malignant blood-stained faces 
stared at the passers-by upon the Roman high- 
ways. They stare still in history, and they stare 
to-day, not from pikes but from an infinite number 
of children of slaves. Spartacus lives. 

What is called the Spartacus movement in 
Germany is called Bolshevism in Russia. Bol- 
shevism is eminently a slave movement. The 
children of the serfs have grasped everything. 
Its first expression has been class war and revenge 
on the master class. There is so much of slave 



246 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xii 

in the Russian that his racial name is Slav. Now 
comes out all the resentment and ill-feeling of 
centuries. Unlike the followers of Spartacus the 
Russian serf has triumphed, and instead of having 
his head impaled he has been able to impale the 
heads of his masters. From his example all 
slaves and children of slaves throughout the 
world have taken courage. Russian serfs and 
military slaves and wage-slaves and Negroes are 
finding an accord, and here we have the founda- 
tion for a grand proletarian revolutionary move- 
ment throughout the world. 

It may be objected that the American Negroes 
are not Bolshevik. They are not in name, but 
they are potentially of the same spirit. They hate 
the white proletariat because the latter uses them 
ill, but curiously enough they have a common 
cause. The leaders of the Negro forward move- 
ment are almost exclusively Bolshevik in spirit. 
We cannot wonder at it. Persecution has 
developed a great resentment and class-hate. 
When the time comes Dr. Du Bois and Johnson, 
and Walter White and Pickens and the rest 
will know whose side they are on in the great 
world-struggle. 

There are those who will say that if ever the 
lynching mob become the victims of the enraged 
Negroes, no one will shed tears but the lynchers 
themselves. They say the lyncher knows that 
he is wrong and has been told so often. Thus, 
in a pedagogic way, think the wise-heads who do 
not stray out of doors when a Negro is being 
killed. Thus think also the Governors of the 



XII THE NEW NEGRO MIND 247 

States, the sheriffs, the judges, the police, and the 
law. But they are fond and foolish. It is not 
the lynching crowd on whom vengeance will 
ultimately be taken. The Negro mob, when it 
rises, may easily join with the lynchers and make 
common cause against those who should have 
administered the law, and against those who 
have stood idly by. In those days we may see 
the ugly crowd making its way to the Pilate 
Governors, who so often wash their hands, and 
beating them to death and burning their wives. 
That is the real movement. There is nothing 
very reasonable in it, but the risen mob is not 
guided by logic. 

Resentment is the principal feeling of the 
Negro soldiers returned from France. It is 
an example of how modern life, undirected, 
uncontrolled, and unadvised, is manufacturing 
ever and ever more of the dangerous [stuff of 
revolution. 

A policy as to the use of Negro citizens in the 
Great War was not come to in the United States. 
Once more the seemingly unworkable theories of 
the Declaration of Independence and the Con- 
stitution were applied equally to the Negro as to 
the white man, as if the Negro were only a white 
man with a dark skin. Negroes were conscripted 
equally with white men, drilled and equipped, 
and sent to France without any regard to the 
two vital questions : 

I. Is it fitting, and can America condone the 
use of coloured troops to fight white 
enemies ^ 



248 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xii 

2. When many white citizens have such a 

violent animus against the Negro, is 

it practicable to use the latter in the 

Army ? 

The first of these questions was evaded by 

America, as it had been from the first by France. 

There are many who think that the use of 

" native " troops against the Germans was more 

indefensible than the German use of poison gas. 

For, by using coloured troops against Whites in 

a white man's quarrel, the moral leadership of 

the Whites is obviously thrown away, and there 

are bound to be serious after - eff^ects in the 

weakening of moral. 

The second question was merely an import- 
ant practical detail that had been overlooked. 
Theoretically, all American citizens are equal. 
The laws apply without distinction of race or 
colour. In practice, equality is denied. What 
more natural than to continue in the theoretical 
assumption of equality, and hope that divergency 
in practice might be overlooked ? What more 
absurd, however, than to take a man who is 
being illegally disfranchised by the community, 
and make him fight for that community ? 

The Northern white soldier did not, however, 
feel ill-disposed toward the black soldier, and I 
have met those who saw deeds of heroism done 
by Negroes, and many who saw them wounded 
and suffering in the common cause, and felt 
drawn towards them, to help them and their 
brothers. But whatever may have been the 
common feeling about Negro soldiers in the 



XII THE NEW NEGRO MIND 249 

United States, it was definitely hostile to them 
in the camps in France. There emerged two 
characteristic points of view : ( i) that it was good 
to kill off as many Negroes as possible, as that 
helped to solve the Negro problem. (2) That 
the Negro was not worthy to fight for his country. 

Not much for patriotism to feed on there ! 
There seems never to have been any resolve 
to make first-class Negro regiments, and those 
units who served in France were by no means 
adequately trained. By all competent accounts 
they were very slack, and it goes without saying 
that an almost superhuman effort of discipline 
was necessary to obtain complete steadiness in 
this terrible war. It was common to endeavour 
to terrorise the Negroes by alarming and exagger- 
ated accounts of the horrors of battle. Negroes 
were talked to by Whites in an unsoldierly way. 
Baiting them and scaring them was thought to 
be better sport than dealing with them sternly 
and seriously. There is no doubt also that some 
white soldiers rejoiced to see the Negro put back 
into the slavery position and forced to obey on 
pain of death. There are those who cannot 
forgive the Negro having got free from slavery, 
and for them the spectacle of the Negro in the 
rank and file afforded much pleasure. Threat- 
ening Negroes with a court martial and death- 
sentence became a characteristic jest. 

The white man, however, soon found that the 
Negro fell into the humour of the war more 
readily than into the tragedy of it. It agreed 
with his own sense of humour. It was soon 



250 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xii 

impossible to scare the raw recruits with yarns. 
The idea of running away from a machine- 
gun became natural and hilarious. The dangers 
from night-bombing raiders over the lines were 
facetiously exaggerated. Hiding best became a 
humorous point of honour, and one Negro would 
vaunt against another how far he fled. Private 
soldiers chaffed their officers on the subject of 
death. Asked what *' going over the top " 
meant, the raw recruit would answer : '* I know : 
it means Good mawnin', Jesus." In short, in 
nearly every Negro unit there set in a humoresque 
attitude to the war — 

Officer : The Germans are going to start an 
offensive. 

Negro soldier : That so, cap ? Then we'se spread 
the news over France. 

— as the popular joke has it. 

The Negro officer then began to receive the 
white man's attention. Having trained many 
coloured officers, Negroes often of education 
and means and refinement, and having given 
them commission and uniform, the Staff came 
to the conclusion that they had made a mistake. 
The white Southern officer stirred up trouble, 
the white ranker would not salute. There was the 
usual sordid squabble in officers' messes. And 
then the upshot — a great number of Negro 
officers subjected to the humiliation of losing 
their commissions and being placed in the ranks. 
This discouragement necessarily set the Negro 
officer thinking. It cultivated his resentment. 



XII THE NEW NEGRO MIND 251 

It sowed in his heart the seed of national dis- 
affection. 

The next serious trouble was that of the French 
women and the Negro. The indifference of 
white women whether the man they walked with 
was black or brown or white was taken as an 
intolerable affront by Southerners. They felt 
called upon to interfere and save the French 
woman from herself. The rape legend was 
imported, and every effort was made to infect 
the French male with race prejudice. Happily 
the propaganda failed. For one thing, Puritanism 
does not easily take root in a French heart, and 
for another, the French have no instinctive horror 
of Negroes. Possibly the rape legend even made 
the Negro a little ornamental from the point of 
view of amour. " Black American troops in 
France have given rise to as many complaints of 
attempted rape as all the rest of the army " — *' Les 
troupes noires americaines en France ont donne 
lieu, a elle seules, a autant de plaintes pour 
tentatives de viol, que tout le reste de I'Armee," 
as an Army order puts it. 

Negro honour, however, demands that the 
charge be rebutted, and the matter has been 
thoroughly investigated. There does not seem 
to be much in it. As every one knows who 
served in the ranks, women of easy virtue were 
extremely plentiful and complaisant. The need 
might easily have been to protect the Negro from 
the women rather than the women from the 
Negro. 

The fact is simply that the Negro walking 



252 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xii 

with a white woman is to the southern American 
White as a red rag to a bull. And as by nature 
this White is unrestrained and unreasonable he 
seeks by all means, fair or foul, to part them. 

Finally, the culmination of the story of the 
American Negro in the war is that the White 
denied him any valour or prowess or military 
virtue of any kind, said the Negro was a coward 
and a runaway and utterly useless in the fighting 
hne. Fighting units were taken off their allotted 
duty and changed to labour units. Regiments 
were ordered home ; whole Brigades were given 
as a present to the grateful French. They may 
have been rather inefficient. But if so, that was 
due to short-time training. Negroes have fought 
magnificently in America's wars of the past. 
They are a great fighting race, and they are 
capable of discipline. 

I listened when at New Orleans to a lecture 
given by Sergeant Needham Roberts of the 
369th U.S. Infantry, a handsome young Negro 
warrior, twice wounded, the first American to be 
decorated by the French Government. He was 
entirely patriotic, and made the apathetic Negro 
audience stand to sing "The Star -Spangled 
Banner." He told how he ran away from home 
to enlist, trained with a mass of black strangers, 
went across the ocean — quite a terrifying experi- 
ence for some of these young soldiers, who but 
for the war had never crossed the sea. He gave 
his first impressions of France and of the line, the 
exaggerated fright of shell explosions and night 
attacks and bombs from the air. His regiment 



XII THE NEW NEGRO MIND 253 

was just getting used to the first aspect of war 
. when one day the news flew round — " We are 
all ordered home again." Official orders to that 
effect quickly followed. They had all packed 
up and were marching to entrain for Cherbourg 
when, according to the sergeant, Foch intervened. 

" Why are you sending them back ? " said he. 

" They are not wanted." 

Foch seemed astonished. 

'' If you cannot use them, I can," said the 
French marshal. 

— *' And then, hurray — we were attached to the 
French." 

It was no playground, the French front, but 
as ever, a sterner piece of reality than American 
or British. The Negroes were hotly engaged 
and had many casualties. Roberts won his Croix 
de Guerre for a feat which he performed with his 
chum Pte. Johnson. They had been left at an 
advanced listening post and apparently over- 
looked — not relieved for three days and three 
nights. The Division had been relieved. On 
the third night the Germans made a raid which 
the two Negro soldiers repelled by themselves, 
first throwing out their bombs, then firing, and 
finishing with a remarkable bit of butchery with 
the bayonet. The Germans whom they did 
not put out of action they put to flight. How 
many Germans lay dead it would be difficult to 
say. The number probably grew like those 
of Falstaff's men in buckram, but I did hear 
twenty mentioned. 

There was no doubt about the fact that 



254 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xii 

Sergeant Roberts was a jolly soldier — a " bonny 
fechter " — and he made himself on good terms 
with his audience very quickly. He came from 
New York and had swung along Fifth Avenue 
with the heroes of New York's Fighting Fifteenth. 
He was full of the faith of the North, horribly 
depressed by the atmosphere of the South, above 
all by the passivity and apathy of the Negroes of 
New Orleans. He had better keep north of the 
Mason-Dixon line, for he is evidently a born 
fighter. 

If the war itself was a persistent educator of 
the Negro, his subsequent treatment after the 
Armistice enforced very terribly what he learned. 
It would be hardly worth while to enlarge on this 
in detail. The fact which I wished to isolate 
is the growing resentment of the coloured people, 
the fact that some twelve millions are becoming 
highly charged with resentment. 

As illustration of this resentment one could 
quote much from the spoken and the written 
word of the Negroes. But a poem, or part of a 
poem, may suffice. It is Archibald Grimke's 
"Thirteen Black Soldiers." The 24th United 
States Infantry, a Negro regiment, was sent to 
Houston, Texas, and was received with lack of 
sympathy and some hostility by the population. 
A series of petty troubles culminated in a riot 
and mutiny. Sixty -four Negroes were court- 
martialled, and thirteen were sentenced to death 
and hanged. It was perhaps a lack of foresight 
to station a Negro regiment amongst such a 
hostile people as the Texans. They are more the 



XII THE NEW NEGRO MIND 255 

enemies of the Negroes than were the Germans, 
and there was certainty of trouble. Grimke's 
poem expresses the boihng resentment to which 
I have referred. 

She hanged them, her thirteen black soldiers. 

She hanged them for mutiny and murder. 

She hanged them after she had put on them her uniform. 

After she had put on them her uniform, the uniform of her 

soldiers. 
She told them they were to be brave, to fight, and if needs be 

to die for her. 
This was many years before she hanged them, her thirteen 

black soldiers. 
She told them to go there and they went. 
To come here and they came, her brave black soldiers. 
For her they went without food and water. 
For her they suffered cold and heat. 
For her they marched by day. 
For her they watched by night. 
For her in strange lands they stood fearless. 
For her in strange lands they watched shelterless. 
For her in strange lands they fought. 
For her in strange lands they bled. 
For her they faced fevers and fierce men. 
For her they were always and everywhere ready to die. 
And now she has hanged them, her thirteen black soldiers. 
For murder and mutiny she hanged them in anger and hate, 
Hanged them in secret and dark and disgrace. 
In secret and dark she disowned them. 
In secret and dark buried them and left them in nameless 

disgrace. 
Why did she hang them, her thirteen black soldiers ? 

• •••••• 

What had they done to merit such fate ? 

She sent them to Houston, to Houston, in Texas, 

She sent them in her uniform to this Southern city. 

She sent them her soldiers, her thirteen brave soldiers 

They went at her bidding to Houston, 

They went where they were ordered. 

They could not choose another place. 

For they were soldiers and went where they were ordered. 



256 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xii 

They marched into Houston not knowing what awaited them. 

Insult awaited them and violence. 

Insult and violence hissed at them from house-windows and 

struck at them in the streets, 
American colorphobia hissed and struck at them as they passed 

by on the streets. 
In street cars they met discrimination and insult, 
" They are not soldiers, they and their uniforms, 
They are but common niggers. 
They must be treated like common niggers, 
They and their uniform." 
So hissed colorphobia, indigenous to Texas, 
And then it squirted its venom on them. 
Squirted its venom on them and on her uniform. 

• ••••• • 

And what did she do, she who put that uniform on them. 

And bade them to do and die if needs be for her ? 

Did she raise an arm to protect them .? 

Did she raise her voice to frighten away the reptilian thing i* 

Did she lift a finger or say a word of rebuke at it ? 

Did she do anything in defence of her black soldiers ? 

She did nothing. She sat complacent, indifferent in her seat 

of power. 
She had eyes but she refused to see what Houston was doing 

to her black soldiers, 
She had ears but she stuffed them with cotton. 
That she might not hear the murmured rage of her black 

soldiers. 
They suffered alone, they were defenceless against insult and 

violence. 
For she would not see them nor hear them nor protect them. 
Then in desperation they smote the reptilian thing. 
They smote it as they had smitten before her enemies. 
For was it not her enemy, the reptilian thing, as well as their 

own ? 
They in an hour of madness smote it in battle furiously. 
And it shrank back from their blows hysterical, 
Terror and fear of death seized it, and it cried unto her for help. 
And she, who would not hear her black soldiers in their dire 

need. 
She, who put her uniform on them, heard their enemy. 
She flew at its call and hanged her brave black soldiers. 



XII THE NEW NEGRO MIND 257 

She hanged them for doing for themselves what she ought to 

have done for them, 
She hanged them for resenting insult to her uniform, 
She hanged them for defending from violence her brave black 

soldiers. 

• • • • • • • 

They marched with the dignity of brave men to the gallows. 
With the souls of warriors they marched without a whimper 

to their doom. 
And so they were hanged, her thirteen black soldiers. 
And so they lie buried in nameless disgrace. 

Is the watchword of Dr. Bu Bois to be wondered 
at.?— 

We return. 

We return from fighting. 

We return fighting. 

I met at Memphis one of the few southern 
White men who are sympathetic to the Negro 
and understand the gravity of the situation. This 
was Mr. Bolton Smith, a rich business man, a 
member of the Rotary Club quand meme. As 
one who among other activities advances money 
on the security of real estate in the Mississippi 
Delta, he necessarily has been brought a great 
deal into contact with the Negro. Society in 
Memphis looked at him somewhat askance be- 
cause he did not share the current conventional 
view, but he was not black-balled, only, indul- 
gently laughed at as one who had a weak spot 
in his mental armour. In places remote from 
Memphis, however, his views receive weighty 
consideration. 

If he had his way he would give the Negro 
his right and his due, and stop lynching. He 
does not believe the Negro wishes ** social 

s 



258 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xii 

equality," the right to mix indiscriminately with 
white people, in schools, in trains, in marriage. 
He thinks the Negro prefers to be separate as 
long as there is no implied dishonour. He made 
a special study of the Frederick Douglass school 
at Cincinnati : an all-black school which is 
admirably conducted, and found that by them- 
selves the Negroes progress more than when 
mixed with Whites. As Cincinnati is a city 
on the northern fringe, with northern institutions, 
the Negroes had the choice to go to mixed schools 
with white children if they desired, but they 
preferred to be by themselves, and indeed did 
better by themselves. As regards Jim Crow 
cars. Smith said he would give equal comfort 
and equal facilities in coloured cars and in 
coloured waiting-rooms. He does not think 
the Negro desires to be in a Pullman car where 
there are white women. It works without scandal 
in the North, but there is too much risk of the 
woman going into hysterics in the South and the 
Negro getting lynched at a wayside station. 
He beUeves in abandoning *' the poUcy of pin- 
pricks," and, above all, in suppressing lynching 
and race-riot. 

He was, however, strongly opposed to Du 
Bois and the National Association. He con- 
sidered that Du Bois was leading the Negroes 
wrongly, leading them in fact to a worse calamity 
than any which had yet overtaken them. " If 
the Negro resorts to force," said Mr. Smith to 
me, '' he will be destroyed." In peace and in 
law the white man fails to understand how to 



XII THE NEW NEGRO MIND 259 

handle the Negro, but if it comes to force the 
issue becomes quite simple for the white man, 
and the Negro stands little more chance than a 
savage. Christianity alone can save the Negro, 
and the leaders of the National Association are 
leading the people away from Christianity. He 
wished all Negroes could see how fatal it is for 
them to abandon Christianity. 

" If it were not for the lynchings, the National 
Association and its newspaper would shrink to 
very small proportions. Every time a Negro 
is lynched it adds a thousand to the circulation 
of the Crisis^ and a burning adds ten thousand," 
said he. 

" Hell would soon lose its heat should sin 
expire," said I. I was inclined to agree that 
the only way was through Christianity. But 
there is such a thing as the wrath of God, and it 
is not incompatible with Divine Fatherhood and 
all-merciful Providence. John Brown has been 
greatly condemned, but he was not outside 
Christianity — surely he was a child of God. 
He used to think that without much shedding 
of blood the crimes of this guilty land could be 
purged away, but now . . . 

I do not think the white South will be able to 
avert the wrath of God by machine-guns, nor 
will it quell the Negro by force once the Negro 
moves from the depths of his being. Better 
than believe in meeting the great wrath is to be 
advised betimes and mend one's ways. Was not 
the Civil War a sufficient blood-letting ? Could 
not the lesson be learned .? 



26o CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xii 

It is certainly in vain to work directly against 
Du Bois when his power as a leader of revolt 
could be removed utterly by stopping the lynch- 
ing. The U.S. Postmaster-General refused postal 
facilities to one number of his newspaper because 
it was going too far in stirring up sedition, but 
it was ineffectual, and was on the contrary a use- 
ful advertisement for the paper. And then, is it 
not known there are far more advanced groups 
of Negroes than that of the association of which 
Dr. Du Bois is President. There are those who 
laugh Du Bois to scorn as a Moderate. There 
are those who have sworn that for every Negro 
done to death by the mob two white men shall 
somehow perish. An eye for an eye and a tooth 
for a tooth is the gospel — or rather, two eyes for 
one. Something is being started which will not 
cease with a recital of the Beatitudes. If America 
does not cast out the devil of class-hate from the 
midst of her she will again be ravished by the 
Angel of Death as in the Civil War. The 
established peaceful routine of a country like 
America is very deceptive. All seems so per- 
manent, so unshakable. The new refinement, the 
new politeness and well-lined culture, and vast 
commercial organisation and Press suggest that no 
calamity could overtake them. The force that 
makes for disruption and anarchy is generated 
silently and secretly. It accumulates, accumu- 
lates, and one day it must discharge itself. Its 
name is resentment, and its first expression is 
revenge. 



XIII 
NEGRO LEADERSHIP 

Dr. W. E. Burghardt Du Bois as the leader of 
the miUtant movement is the greatest force among 
the Negroes to-day. Light of skin, short of 
stature, square-headed, he would pass easily in 
Southern Europe or in Russia as a white man. 
He looks rather like a highly polished Jewish 
professor. Considered carefully, however, it will 
be realised that behind an impassive mask-like 
face is an emotional and fiery nature. There is 
a white heat of resentment in him, and a decision 
not to forgive. Possibly his devotion to the cause 
and the race drags him down a little. For he is 
possessed of an unusual literary genius. The 
fire that ran in the veins of Dumas and of Pushkin 
is in him also, and as a master of the written word 
he stands entirely without rival in the American 
Negro world. In that respect he is altogether 
a greater man than Booker T. Washington. The 
latter was a practical genius, and what is gall and 
wormwood in the bosom of Du Bois was the milk 
of human kindness in his more sooty natural 
breast. " I'm going to shout ' Glory ! ' when this 
world is a-fire, and I don't feel noways tired," he 

261 



262 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xiii 

used always to be saying. '' Booker T.," as he is 
affectionately called, was the wonderful coloured 
baby of the first days of freedom. His Up from 
Slavery which he wrote, and the vocational 
institute of Tuskegee, Alabama, are the chief 
monuments which he left behind him. But his 
portrait is almost as common in Negro cabins as 
pictures of the Tsar used to be in Russian izbas. 
*' Our Booker T.," the Negroes say lovingly 
and possessingly, looking upon the first of their 
number who rose from the dark depths of servi- 
tude, first-fruits of them that slept. Freedom and 
Hope raised Booker T. Washington, but now he 
is dead a new time needs a new leader. Fain 
would the Whites have " Booker T." back. 
The amenable Negro leader is much more to 
their taste than the militant one. 

Many years ago Du Bois wrote Souls oj Black 
Folky which is a fascinating personal study. It 
has a true literary quality which raises it from the 
ruck of ephemeral publications to an enduring 
place. It is, however, immature. There is an 
emphasis of personal culture and a note of self- 
pity which a more developed writer would have 
been at pains to transmute. But the gift is 
unmistakable. You perceive it again and in 
better measure in Darkwater published this year. 

It has taken the war and the recent increased 
persecution of the Negro people to bring out 
the real power of Du Bois. As a Labour leader 
said to me : " He is first of all a statesman and 
a politician. He is leading the Negroes. I 
wonder where he will lead them to ? " 



XIII NEGRO LEADERSHIP 263 

Certainly no other Negro in the United States 
is regarded by so many others as their leader. No 
doubt most of the quiet, cautious, and tradition- 
ally religious Negroes fight shy of him. But 
they, for their part, have no leader. Dr. Moton, 
the lineal descendant of Booker Washington at 
Tuskegee Institute, is only a leader in the sense 
that Dr. Arnold of Rugby might be considered a 
leader. He is there in his place. He is a great 
light, and is taken for granted. 

In August 19 1 9 Dr. Moton wrote to the 
President, warning him of the growing tension : 

I want especially to call your attention to the 
intense feeling on the part of the coloured people 
throughout the country towards white people, and 
the apparent revolutionary attitude of many Negroes 
which shows itself in a desire to have justice at any cost. 
The riots in Washington and Chicago and near-riots 
in many other cities have not surprised me in the 
least. I predicted in an address several months ago 
at the fiftieth anniversary of the Hampton Institute, on 
the second of May — ex-President Taft and Mr. George 
Foster Peabody were present at the time — that this 
would happen if the matter was not taken hold of 
vigorously by the thoughtful elements of both races. 

I think the time is at hand, and I think of nothing 
that would have a more salutary effect on the whole 
situation now than if you should in your own wise 
way, as you did a year ago, make a statement regarding 
mob law ; laying especial stress on lynching and every 
form of injustice and unfairness. You would lose 
nothing by specifically referring to the lynching record 
in the past six months ; many of them have been 
attended with unusual horrors, and it would be easy 
to do it now because of the two most recent riots in 



264 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xiii 

the North, notably Washington and Chicago. The 
South was never more ready to listen than at present 
to that kind of advice, and it would have a tremend- 
ously stabilizing effect, as I have said, on the members 
of my race. 

You very probably saw the account of the lynching 
in Georgia, of an old coloured man seventy years of 
age who shot one of two intoxicated white men in 
his attempt to protect two coloured girls, who had 
been commanded to come out of their home in the 
night by these two men. The coloured man killed 
the white man after he had been shot by one of the 
white men because he had simply protested. 

I am enclosing the lynching record for the past 
six months and an editorial from the Atlanta Constitution^ 
which strongly denounces mob violence. 

With all kind wishes, and assuring you of no 
desire to add to your burdens, but simply to call 
attention to what seems to me vital not only for the 
interest of the twelve millions of black people, but 
equally as important for the welfare of the millions 
of whites whom they touch, I am, very sincerely and 
gratefully, R. R. Moton. 

In reply to this letter President Wilson v^rote 
Dr. Moton as follows : 

My dear Dr. Moton — Thank you sincerely for 
your letter of August eighth. It conveys information 
and suggestions, the importance of which I fully realize 
and for which I am sincerely obliged. I will take the 
suggestions you make under very serious consider- 
ation, because I realize how critical the situation has 
become and how important it is to steady affairs in 
every possible way. 

Again thanking you for your public-spirited co- 
operation. Cordially and sincerely yours, 

WooDRow Wilson. 



XIII NEGRO LEADERSHIP 265 

With this conventional reply the matter 
closed, and in the months which followed 
things in America became steadily worse. The 
twilight peace of Tuskegee has been in contrast 
with the loud clamorous denunciations from Dr. 
Du Bois. For Du Bois gives forth new words 
of leadership each month. He has a voice like 
a trumpet and must be heard. Therefore he is 
the leader. 

Associated with him are many brilliant men, 
of whom the most powerful is the poet and orator 
James Welldon Johnson, a darker man than Du 
Bois, slender and taller. He is energetic, and 
may constantly be heard from platforms in New 
York and elsewhere. I heard him speak. I was 
not moved by him as by Dean Pickens, but he 
is more intense and has the reputation of extra- 
ordinary brilliance at times. 

If the persecution were lifted from off the 
Negro race there would, doubtless, be room for 
quiet educational leadership, and flamboyancy 
would fail. White sympathisers such as Mr. 
Bolton Smith of Memphis emphasise the value 
of the quieter, more unobtrusive work done in 
places like Piney Woods School, the Frederick 
Douglass School, by Laurence Jones and Principal 
Russell. But, of course, peaceful growth is 
impossible until the mass of the people are 
guaranteed against the present terrifying mob 
violence and general social injustice. 

On the other hand, it does not follow that Du 
Bois is a new Moses leading his people to a 
Promised Land. He may be leading them to 



266 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xiii 

even more bloodshed and slaughter. He may be 
leading them to a complete racial fiasco, not 
because he wants to do so or can do otherwise, 
but because perhaps that fiasco is written on the 
American Negro's card of destiny. 

The Negroes are arming themselves. They 
are more ready to retaliate — to quote a letter from 
my friend at Memphis : 

There is an increased determination on the part 
of great numbers of Negroes to defend their rights 
by force. . . . The negro is emotional, and the 
masses of them are quite ready to think they are 
oppressed in matters in which they are not oppressed 
at all and, therefore, to use force on unjustifiable 
occasions. This shows itself in the increased use of 
firearms by petty thieves against the police. A negro 
was arrested here recently on the charge of selling 
stolen chickens. His home was known. It was in- 
conceivable that the ordinary white petty thief would 
shoot officers of the law in order to prevent an arrest 
which probably would have resulted in a compara- 
tively small punishment, but this man murdered an 
officer and is to be hung. The same thing has occurred 
here several times. Under these circumstances it is 
difficult to induce the police to hold the proper attitude 
toward the negro. They never know when he is 
going to shoot and so it is natural that they should shoot 
a negro much quicker than they would a white man. 
This begets in its turn a feeling of resentment which 
makes the relations between the negro and the police 
more difficult. I cannot emphasise too strongly the 
fact that when a minority tries to protect itself — 
although it may use only the weapons which the 
majority in the past has been accustomed to use in 
defending itself against tyranny, the minority is apt 



XIII NEGRO LEADERSHIP 267 

to find itself condemned in the eyes of the public. 
Take the attitude which the mass of Americans are 
occupying with reference to the Reds and their 
deportation. ... A small number of the Reds have 
appealed to force — the whole crowd are more or less 
outlawed by American public opinion. What I am 
apprehensive of if the negroes continue to follow 
Du Bois is just such an embitterment of relations 
between the two races. I do not believe that the 
race relation in Chicago is the better for the race 
riot. On the other hand, in Europe, every revolution 
usually resulted sooner or later in greater freedom 
even where the revolution was suppressed. My 
experience with negro uprisings has been precisely 
the reverse. Such progress as the negro has made has 
been by education and the awakening of the conscience 
of the white man. 

To put the matter in a few words, the problem 
that I would like immensely to emphasise to you, is 
the wholly abnormal position of the minority seeking 
its rights. We are apt to think that the negro can 
achieve these rights in the way that our ancestors 
achieved theirs against the aristocracy, but unless I am 
utterly wrong, that view is doomed to failure and if 
followed will result in embittering the relations be- 
tween the races so that segregation or deportation or 
extermination must result. Personally I do not believe 
that we will fail, but if we succeed it will be in spite of 
Du Bois and of the attitude of armed resistance. Never 
was a better illustration of the wisdom under certain 
conditions of the Tolstoi attitude of non-resistance. 

That of course is nicely deduced, but events 
are not ruled by wisdom and logic. It might 
very well have been said to the Israelites during 
the long period of the Plagues. It is such a 
period in the history of the Negroes. 



XIV 

THE WORLD ASPECT 

The American Negroes are the aristocrats of the 

Negro world. It may be a paradox to assume 

that a proletariat can become an aristocracy, 

but an aristocracy is the best a race can produce 

in culture and manners. No doubt African 

Negrodom is made up of a great number of races, 

but all seem to have one common interest and to 

yield more homage to the name of Africa itself 

than to any constituent part, kingdom, or state 

or pasture. The American Negro is beginning 

to lead Africa as he is leading the Indies. The 

reason is that the children of the American slaves 

have made the greatest cultural progress of all 

Negroes. Though persecution has been less 

in some parts of Africa and on the West Indian 

islands, opportunity has also been less. In 1863 

America committed herself to the task of raising 

her millions of black slaves to the cultural level 

of white citizenship. But no one has ever essayed 

to raise the savage masses of Africa much higher 

than the baptismal font. It is always pointed out 

to the American Negro that his good fortune 

is prodigious. The Negro retorts that if he has 

268 



XIV THE WORLD ASPECT 269 

good fortune his fathers paid for it in the suffer- 
ings of slavery, and he still pays in the price of 
lynching. Yet, of course, the Negroes in Africa 
have suffered greatly, and their fathers have 
suffered greatly. No Negro can deny that he 
owes America much. And Africa owes, or will 
owe, more still. 

In America the door at least stands open for 
Negro progress. In Africa, and especially in 
South Africa, it is not quite certain that the door 
is not closed. If the door remains ajar it is not 
because the white man wills it, but because the 
American Negro has got his foot in. A low 
Commercial-Imperial idea reigns. The native 
is " the labour on the spot." An unfailing supply 
of cheap native labour is considered the great 
desideratum. Attempts on the Negro's part to 
raise himself by education or by technical skill 
are looked upon with suspicion, and one must 
remember that as far as the British Empire 
or French or Belgian mandatorial regions are 
concerned there are no institutions in Africa 
comparable to Tuskegee and Hampton. If the 
Labour Unions in the United States are foolishly 
antagonistic to the progress of Negro skilled 
labour, they are twice more so in South Africa. 
If there is peonage in America, there is an abund- 
ance of pseudo-slavery in Africa ; and whilst the 
American trolley-car has its Jim Crow section, 
the South African one often has not even that, 
and the Negro must walk unless accompanied by 
white employer. An open hostility has arisen 
between Black and White which much resembles 



270 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xiv 

that of the southern States of America. If it 
were not for the leadership of the American 
Negroes it would not be promising for Negrodom 
as a whole. 

Of course, there is a vital difference between 
the British Empire and the United States ; the 
people of the Empire are subjects, and of the 
Republic they are citizens. Whilst Britain tech- 
nically rules her four hundred million coloured 
^\ih]tcX.% J rom above downward^ America theoretic- 
ally holds that all her people are free and equal. 
The American ideal is higher, the British more 
practical. 

There is another difference, and it is that our 
Blacks, except in the Indies, are mostly indigenous 
and have not been transplanted from their native 
wilds. They have not been slaves and have not 
the slave-psychology. In Africa the white man 
is in contact with masses of natives in a primitive 
condition ; in the United States the Negro has 
been definitely cut off from his kith and kin. 
The American Negro was set free in a land 
rampant with democratic ideals and possessed 
of a sublime belief in human progress. But 
Africa has been and is increasingly a commercial 
domain, whose only function from the modern 
white man's point of view is the making of 
material fortune. The white man in Africa is 
much more exclusively a dollar-hunter than the 
American. And though Britain has been much 
praised for letting South Africa govern herself, 
it does not seem as if the Union was making much 
progress in ideals and culture. The King of 



XIV THE WORLD ASPECT 271 

England was a better friend to the native than 
the local government is proving itself to be. 

A blatant anti-nigger tendency is grov^ing 
throughout the British Empire, and it is very 
vulgar, very undignified, and at the same time 
disgraceful. It applies to India and Egypt as 
much as to Africa. It is due, perhaps, to a general 
deterioration in education and training. One 
may remark that those vv^ho complain of the w^ays 
of their servants are generally unfitted to have 
servants, and it is characteristic of parvenus to 
ill-treat those beneath them, and I w^ould say if 
a white man cannot get on well with a Negro 
it is a sign that he is not a gentleman. But the 
genuine type of English gentleman is passing. 
To think that the race of Livingstone and 
Stanley, Mungo Park and Harry Johnston should 
be pitifully complaining about the Negroes, as 
if God had not made them aright ! 

The British people used to be able to manage 
native races well — in the age of the Victorian, 
when the Englishman could treat his native 
servant as if he were a gentleman also, never 
doubting that in God's sight an equal dignity 
invested both master and man. Read the 
memoirs and letters of colonial people of time 
past, and then compare with the current noisy 
prejudice in India and Africa. The falling- 
away is appalling. And the " natives " know the 
change which has been coming about — the new 
type of officer and employer, the man with the 
whisky-brain, the mind stocked with music-hall 
funniosity and pseudo-cynicism, the grumbler, 



272 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xiv 

the man who expects everything to have been 
arranged for his comfort and success beforehand. 
Astonishing to hear young officers calhng even 
Hindoos and Syrians and Arabs niggers ! The 
native instinctively knows the man of restraint 
and good manners and human dignity and 
properly trained unselfishness. The lowest coolie 
can tell the difference between a gentleman and 
a cad ; and the educated coloured man, while he 
respects in the deepest way the nation of Shake- 
speare and Burke and Wellington and Gordon, 
is puzzled to find a common spirit in the English- 
speaking people whom he meets to-day. 

" I was reared in an atmosphere of admiration 
— almost of veneration — for England," says Dr. 
Du Bois. *' I had always looked on England 
as the best administrator of coloured peoples, and 
laid her success to her system of justice," but he 
wavers in that faith now, having heard the new 
story of Hindoos and Arabs and the Negroes of 
South Africa and Negroes of West Africa. 

In converse with Professor Hoffmann in New 
Orleans, a British subject formerly in the service 
of the British Government in Northern Nigeria, 
an extremely capable and enlightened Negro, 
now headmaster of a Coloured school, I found 
confirmation of this. His impression of the 
change of spirit in the Empire was similar to 
that expressed by Du Bois, and I found admira- 
tion of British rule giving way to doubt in many 
Negro minds. Indeed, it has been possible for 
American Anglophobes to do a good deal of 
propaganda among the Negroes by representing 



XIV THE WORLD ASPECT 273 

how badly die natives now fare under British 
rule. There is some exaggeration in this respect, 
but it makes an important impression on the 
mind of the American Negro. He has begun 
to feel a care and an anxiety for the condition 
of his brethren overseas. The educated Negro 
of the United States now feels a responsibility 
towards the African Negro, and also towards 
all dark-skinned people whatsoever. 

The assumption by the Negro of a common 
ground with the natives of India is somewhat 
surprising and amusing. There is no ethno- 
logical common ground. But the colour bar 
of the British Empire applies almost as strin- 
gently to the Indians as to the Negroes. '' We'll 
smash them all to hell," says a bellicose Negro 
stranger to a young Hindoo student at Washing- 
ton, much to the astonishment of the latter. The 
advanced Negroes of America place the liberation 
of the peoples of India and Egypt in the very 
foreground of their world - policy. They say 
also that the natives of South Africa must be 
delivered from the Union of South Africa. 

One thing is certain, and that is that the 
British Empire will not hold together for long 
•unless the Whites can manage the Blacks, and 
uphold the standard of justice which was formerly 
lived by. Votes are not necessary, but ordinary 
human rights of free existence and opportunity 
are necessary. The Empire is at the cross-roads. 
It is a question whether it can be held together 
by goodwill, or whether Britain will be forced 
to inaugurate a rule of force and obedience. The 

T 



274 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xiv 

old conception of goodwill is being tested in 
South Africa and Egypt and India as it is in 
Ireland. Possibly, as a result of the war, political 
circumstances may force it back to the ideal of 
force and a paramount central authority. The 
belief of native races in the King, and their hatred 
of the King's intermediaries, is characteristic 
of the time. The American Negro is keeping 
a sharp look-out on the lot of coloured people 
within the British Empire. As he leads in 
intelligence, in ideals, and in material wealth, 
he intends to missionarise the native world in 
the name of civilisation. The missionaries are 
called agitators ; their Press seditious ; their 
ideals dangerous ; but words do not alter the 
fact that the flag of Pan-African unity has been 
raised, and the common needs of all dark- 
skinned races have been mooted. 

The Republic of Liberia has often been dis- 
missed as a failure by the white man. But it is 
destined to be America's advanced post in Africa 
for Black civilising Black. I was fortunate in 
meeting in America Bishop Lloyd, just returned 
from Liberia, and he gave a very interest- 
ing account of the positive side of development 
there. First of all the American Negro is the 
eltte^ the aristocracy of Liberia. He is taking 
upon himself the immense task of educating the 
Negro masses of the interior. In this and in 
commerce and in the establishment of law and 
order, Liberia is very successful. America and 
American ideals are a gospel to the Liberian 
Negroes. Never a word is said of the injustices 



XIV THE WORLD ASPECT 275 

and sufferings which attend Negro hfe in the 
States, but, on the contrary, America is regarded 
as a Negro paradise. When America declared war 
on Germany it was the joy of Liberia to declare 
war also, and her war-effort was remarkable. 

It is somewhat curious that whilst British 
difficulties with native races obtain large advertise- 
ment in the United States and elsewhere, the 
lynchings and burnings and race-riots of America 
are in general successfully hushed up within 
the States where they occur. But, of course, the 
American Negro is very proud of the America 
which he feels he helped in no small way to 
make. America has given the Negro an ideal, 
and she is to him religion. All that is new in 
the Negro movement, moreover, takes its rise 
from America. 

We have seen inaugurated in New York 
recently the so-called " Black Star Line," a line 
of steamships owned by Negroes, and manned 
by Negroes. Its object is to trade with Negro 
communities, and advance the common interests 
of the dark-skinned people throughout the world. 
Wliether it is destined to succeed depends on the 
soundness of its financial backing. But it is an 
interesting adventure. Its first ship out of New 
York carried out tlie last cargo of whisky before 
" Prohibition " set in. A storm forced the 
vessel back to port after the port had become 
legally " dry," and some thought the cargo 
would be seized. It was said there were many 
leaks to the ship, but after many parleys 
and reconnaissances with white officials the 



276 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xiv 

Yarmouth^ afterwards named Frederick Douglass, 
got away. 

It is generally advertised under the caption, 
"OVER THE TOP"— FOR WHAT? and 
was started by a Negro orator called the Hon. 
Marcus Garvey. He founded the Universal 
Negro Improvement Association which boasts 
now a membership of over two millions in 
America, Africa, and the Indies. This is a militant 
organisation. But its membership is evidently 
useful as a ready-to-hand investing public who 
can be persuaded to put money into a series 
of enterprises such as " The Negro Factories 
Corporation " and the Black Star Line. The 
Association has its organ. The Negro World, 
and it meets in Harlem at a place called popu- 
larly " The Subway Church," between 7th and 
Lennox Avenues. Whites are not admitted, but 
the crowds are so huge it is possible to slip in. 
Musical features alternate with impassioned 
oratory. Whether, like a bubble blown from 
the soap of commerce and the water and air of 
humanitarianism, this will burst and let the 
members down, or whether it is sound and genu- 
ine, it is at least instructive in its developments. 
The speakers choose the largest terms of thought, 
and visualise some^.four hundred millions of 
coloured brethren. A universal convention was 
called. It met this August, 1920, with repre- 
sentatives from all parts of the world. Garvey 
was clad in crimson like some new Caesar, and 
all Africa was claimed by the Negro race, to be 
ruled by Negroes and developed by Negroes. 



XIV THE WORLD ASPECT 277 

The black, red, and green banner of Pan- 
Africanism was unfurled. 

How the Yarmouth fared with the rest of her 
*' wet cargo " during her six months' trip has not 
been made public, but the Negroes hailed the 
progress of the vessel as a " diplomatic triumph," 
and when it returned to New York an accession 
of twenty-five thousand new members was an- 
nounced — 5000 in Cuba, 2500 in Jamaica, 8000 
in Panama, 7000 in Bocas del Toro and Port 
Limon. The staff of the ship and its ''ambassadors" 
were feted on their return. All made speeches, 
and were greeted with the greatest enthusiasm. 
Thus, at the '' Star Casino " one of the ambassa- 
dors described the arrival at Jamaica : 

At last we came in sight of the emerald isle of the 
Caribbean Sea — that beautiful island that is ever green 
— that wonderful island Jamaica ; and dear indeed 
is the island of Jamaica to me. With pleasure I 
saw the people as they crowded along the docks to 
catch the first view of our steamer, the first ship of 
the Black Star Line. I could hear the hurrahs and 
the huzzahs as she majestically wended her way up 
to Port Royal. We had taken on board our Negro 
pilot, who piloted us into the harbour of Kingston, 
one of the finest harbours of the world. As she 
sped along, the people of Kingston were running 
down the streets in order that they might catch a 
sight of the Tarmouth. We^steamed to the dock 
and they came on board. They did not wait for 
invitation to the Captain's cabin, but came up to the 
wheel-house, they came into the chart-room, they 
invaded every portion of the ship. . . . On the 
second night after our arrival a grand reception was 
arranged. 



278 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xiv 

The ship made a triumphal entry wherever she 
arrived. At one port where the ropes were 
thrown out from the ship the Negroes seized 
them, pulled her alongside the dock of a fruit 
company, and then with their hands pulled the 
vessel itself the entire length of the quay. No 
one had ever seen the like, but the Blacks wanted 
to feel it with their hands — their own ship. 

This was strictly a new-world voyage, and a 
comparatively easy one, with plenty of passengers 
and of freight. The cry is for more ships and 
bigger enterprise, and if the company makes 
good, Africa will no doubt see Africa come riding 
towards itself on the waves. It is possible, how- 
ever, that the Whites of Africa may prove more 
hostile than those of the easy-going States of 
South America and the Indies. The news of 
the Negro Line is no doubt very rousing for all 
intelligent coloured people. 

What in reality is Black Internationalism is 
hardly realised as yet, especially by Great Britain. 
Anything said against the Negroes is heard by a 
vast number of educated and intelligent coloured 
people. Thus you find the words of the Germano- 
phile, E. D. Morel, used to stir the masses against 
Britain. Says Morel, according to the Negroes : 
" The results of installing black barbarians among 
European communities are inevitable. . . . The 
African is the most developed sexually of any. . . . 
Sexually, they are unrestrained and unrestrain- 
able. That is perfectly well known. . . . For the 
working classes the importation of Negro mer- 
cenaries by the hundred thousand from the heart 



XIV THE WORLD ASPECT 279 

of Africa to fight the battles and execute the 
lusts of capitalist governments in the heart of 
Europe is a terrific portent. The workers, alike 
of Britain, France, and Italy, will be ill-advised 
if they allow it to pass in silence." And when 
the Daily Herald says that " wherever there are 
black troops who have been long distant from 
their own womenfolk there follows a ghastly 
outbreak of prostitution, rape, and syphilis," it 
is necessarily treated as a slur by Negroes. A 
Negro writer who protested in a well -written 
and cogent letter to that newspaper fails to 
get his letter printed, but he prints it all right 
in the Negro Press of America, and asks, 
'* Why this obscene maniacal outburst about 
the sex-vitality of black men in a proletarian 
paper ? " 

If there is a race-riot as at Cardiff or Liverpool, 
or if a scheme is mooted to dispossess the squatters 
of Rhodesia of more of their land, or a General 
Dyer machine-guns a crowd of civilians in the 
name of keeping order in India — it is absurd to 
think of the matter locally and provincially. It 
is discussed throughout the world. It is impos- 
sible to act now as if the subject races had no 
collective consciousness. 



So much for the point of view of the world 
outside America. There is another point of view 
which is perhaps closer to those subjects specially 
treated in this volume. What the world does to 
the native and says of him are known in America. 



28o CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xiv 

America has power to help the native races of 
dark colour throughout the world, and many- 
Americans, white as well as dark, are willing 
to do so. But there is one very serious difficulty, 
and that is the moral sanction. 

Whilst those things occur, such as burning 
Negroes at the stake and denying them the 
equable justice of a true Court of law, America 
has no right to speak ; her truly grand idealism 
is rendered almost wholly impotent. It was the 
same in the promulgation of the League of 
Nations and the idea of helping small nations ; 
it is the same with regard to American inter- 
ference, in the name of human rights and ideals, 
in the Irish question. It can always be objected : 
Why do you not look after your own subjects 
first, and save your Negroes ^ 

An American said to me in Philadelphia — " I 
am not over fond of the Bolsheviks, but of one 
thing I am glad — T/ie red hand oj the Tsar will 
never rule a gain. ^^ 

No? 

And another said : " Thank God the pogroms 



are over." 



Are they ? 

And a third said : '* I am sorry America 
refused to take a mandate for Armenia." 

But why not take a mandate for Georgia and 
Mississippi } 

In 191 2, when the question of American 
delegations to Ireland was being discussed, a 
member in the British House of Commons 
asked if a British delegation could not be sent 



XIV THE WORLD ASPECT 281 

to America to investigate conditions among the 
Negroes. 

Mr. Bonar Law thought that a very humorous 
suggestion. The very humour of it v^as sufficient 
answer to America. No need for Britain to send 
investigators. 

As long as America with her ideals was enough 
unto herself the Negro question was strictly her 
affair. But when she takes the moral leadership 
of the civilised world it becomes to a certain 
extent every one's affair. 

The point is that America as a whole cannot 
afford to tolerate what is done locally in particular 
States. It is not a matter of non-interference 
from Washington in the local affairs of Georgia 
and Mississippi and the rest. The baleful hap- 
penings in these States rob Americans in other 
States of their good name, and spoil America's 
reputation in the world. The fact that the terms 
of the Constitution are not carried out decreases 
throughout the value of the American citizen- 
ship. And the growing scandal causes America's 
opinions on world politics to be seriously dis- 
counted. 

Thus, though America was antipathetic to 
the old Tsarist regime, and still talks of the 
'' terrible Tsar," it is a fact growing daily more 
obvious that there were aspects of the Tsar's 
government which compare very favourably with 
some which are observable in the great Republic. 
On the other hand, the American Press has lately 
been flooded with the atrocities of the Bolsheviks. 
The fact is, we, all of us, believe evil readily of 



282 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xiv 

a country which is far away, but are not ready 
to face evils near at home when they affect our- 
selves. 



Thus the matter affects the world and America. 
There is a third interest, and that is exclusively 
of the Negro himself. He needs a guaranteed 
charter, an authenticated minimum. If the vote 
cannot be given him, at least let him have justice ; 
if he cannot be admitted to Labour Unions let 
his labour be adequately protected ; if an offence 
against a white woman is regarded as specially 
heinous and dangerous let the legal punishment 
be increased ; afford his women protection also. 
If the Whites have changed tlieir minds about 
slavery let them state how much they sanction — 
what are its limits. Let the American Republic 
and the British Empire state their policy with 
regard to their coloured population. Make it 
clear and manifest. 

The Negro's chief danger lies in a consensus 
of evil opinion concerning him. The South 
rejoices when a race-riot disgraces some Northern 
city and says, *' They're beginning to find out 
the Negro isn't an angel up there." When a 
General Dyer uses the machine-gun argument, 
or a mob of dockers fall foul of Negro immi- 
grants at Cardiff or Liverpool, America smiles 
and says, " You also." When there are reports 
of constant trouble in South Africa some one 
else says, " So you cannot get on with them 
either," and when one is burned to death in 



XIV THE WORLD ASPECT 283 

Georgia, South Africa says, *' So you burn them 
to death, eh ? " 

Out of a cycle of happenings is derived the 
thought : No one can afford to jeel virtuous about 
the Negro. 

That fact no doubt helps the Negro Press in 
the chanting of its sorrows, but it does not help 
the Negro himself. In fact, it shuts out a good 
deal of hope which might have been derived 
from white sympathy, and it threatens the 
coloured peoples as a whole with worse things 
to be. These are the days of democracies and 
white proletariats, and both show themselves less 
friendly towards Negroes and *' natives " than 
the old monarchies. Their hostility is based on 
an old-fashioned ignorant contempt, competition 
in the Labour market, and a sort of fear. Prob- 
ably it can be overcome in time, but if so it will 
not be through white enlightenment but through 
a world organisation and understanding on the 
part of the coloured races. For while throughout 
the world the Whites degenerate somewhat, these 
others rise. The gulf between the two is being 
diminished, and there may come a time not very 
far away when in many places the white hegemony 
will be lost. 



XV 

UP THE MISSISSIPPI 

From New Orleans I travelled up the Mississippi ; 
calling at characteristic points such as Reserve, 
Vicksburg, Greenville, Mound Bayou, Memphis, 
accomplishing the journey partly by rail and 
partly by boat. Reserve is a vast sugar plantation 
owned by five brothers. It is only thirty miles 
from the great city, and the Whites are mostly 
Creoles. The Mother of Rivers, clad in brown 
silk, flows toward the green humps of hundreds 
of levees and embankments. The shores are low 
and level, and there grows almost to the water- 
edge a vast, close, ten-feet-high jungle of sugar 
cane. You walk along the top of the levee till 
you see a lane running across the plantation like 
a trench dug through it. In the lane itself there 
is no view except the erect green wall of canes 
on either hand and the blue sky above. Beneath 
your feet are cart-ruts and withered stalks of 
sugar gone purple at the joints and straw-coloured 
in the flanks. Take a stalk and break it across, 
and it breaks in shreds like a bamboo, revealing 
the inner fatness of sweet pith which you can suck 

if you will, for it is sugar. It has a dilute sweetness 

284 



XV UP THE MISSISSIPPI 285 

which rapidly cloys an unaccustomed palate, 
though the people of the countryside suck it 
continuously, and many consider the natural 
sugar the source of all health. The taste is 
reproduced very well in the pralines on which 
New Orleans prides itself. 

A long and novel sort of lane this through the 
sugar ! A Negro worker coming along the road 
sees a white man but does not want to meet him, 
and he takes three steps into the dark green depths, 
clawing his way inside as through many barely- 
shut doors, and he is lost. You would seek him 
in vain if he wished to hide. 

The lane debouches into a sun-bathed half- 
cleared area which is covered with stricken canes 
looking like warriors tumbled in death after 
a great battle. For it is winter and the time of 
the taking of the harvest. Negro gangs with 
rough bills like meat-choppers are slicing the 
side leaves from the cane and then cutting, 
sUcing and cutting, all over the plantation, with 
joyous noise, and there are great numbers of 
dark girls in straw hats working methodically and 
rhythmically from the shoulder and the bosom, 
striking, cUpping, feUing, as it were automatically, 
unwaveringly. They break in and cut in, strewing 
ever more extensively the carpet of canes in their 
rear, but the wall they attack is ten times as dense 
as the thickest field of corn and twice as high. 
The master or overseer, on horseback, stands about 
and calls sharply to tlie workers in French patois. 
He may be white Creole, but is often as dark as 
his gang. Where sugar is not rising, beyond 



286 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xv 

tlie plantations if you walk as far, Nature seems 
sunk in swamp and swarming with snakes. The 
low jungle over the Mississippi marshes has many 
alligators and a multitude of reptiles. 

In a clearing of the sugar harvest it is possible 
to sit on a hummock of grass and see something 
of a plantation as a whole. It is a cloudless day, 
with the faintest haze over the blueness of the sky. 
The sun-heat is tempered by a delightful air 
which keeps on moving all the time like an 
invisible river of health and vigour. There is a 
whispering in the myriads of the canes, and you 
hear the slashing and the clumping of the cutting 
which is going on all tlie while. On one hand are 
the rudimentary huts of the Negroes, like dressing 
rooms, on the other the lofty refinery of white- 
painted corrugated iron with many chimneys 
and cranes. The refinery, using electric power 
taken from the river, works off^ all the local cane 
and also imports large quantities of raw sugar 
brought from Cuba. Pile-driving is going on in 
the Mississippi, and there will soon be a landing- 
stage to which the Cuban steamers themselves 
can approach. The Louisiana cane is red and the 
Cuban is yellow-green, and the latter is much the 
sweeter. On the plantation, where a fair stretch 
of ground has been cleared, the motor plough 
is at work with huge spiked wheels, turning the 
black soil over the sugar seed for next year. The 
cane has an eye at each joint, the eye is the seed, 
and from it sprouts next year's plant, growing 
at right angles to the old cane in the earth. " In 
February," says the young Creole ploughman. 



XV UP THE MISSISSIPPI 287 

" the young plants have to be dug up and re- 
planted. Work goes on steadily all the year round." 
I resumed my way up the Mississippi on an 
old broken - down steamer with a remarkably 
high, wooden, dripping, splashing paddle-wheel. 
To go by boat used to be a favourite way of 
travelling, but the new railways on each side of 
the great river have killed the water-traffic by 
taking away all large freight. It does not seem 
a profitable enterprise to ply the Mississippi for 
passengers alone. There are, therefore, only 
a few river steamers left, and these have to call 
at all the tiniest and obscurest waterside places 
and lumber camps, and can seldom make more 
than forty or fifty miles a day. Few people will 
travel a week or ten days or a fortnight or any- 
thing you like to Memphis when a locomotive 
will do it in twenty-four hours. The passengers, 
therefore, sit in stuffy trains listening to the vers 
libre of the man who offers in a low voice : 
chewing gum, cigarettes, iced coco-cola ; and the 
country whirls past them unprofitably. The 
cotton -bales which used to go down -stream in 
thousands upon river steamers are now closely 
packed in railway trucks ; and the molasses goes 
no longer in barrels but in huge iron cisterns on 
wheels. There is, therefore, little traffic on the 
mighty river — she is happier and freer, more as 
she was of yore, with few steamers, few barges, 
few rafts — ^instead, only an occasional rowing- 
boat and a ferry. The water is brown and vast 
and placid, and runs in many courses beyond 
wooded islands, beyond vast swampy forks and 



288 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xv 

tongues of the mainland. It is a sort of cafe-au- 
latt colour, and the shadows mantle softly upon 
it, deliciously. Willows grow in the water on 
its shores and islands, and in shadow or sunlight 
the water laps gently the many tree trunks, or 
lies still under the green shade of the branches. 
It is a great intricate unexplored labyrinth of 
waters, and now you see it unadorned and lovely, 
with no advertisements on its banks and no shoddy 
reminder of our civilisation on any hand — the 
Mississippi as she was when we first saw her. I 
travelled on a boat called Senator Cordill, and we 
made barely thirty miles a day, so many were 
the stopping-places, so many the accidents. It 
cost a little over a dollar a day, including board, 
and was the nearest approach to a gift. The ship 
had a motley gang of coloured labourers fetching 
freight on their backs in intermittent procession, 
beating out dust from the long wooden gangway 
up which they tramped with their burdens. The 
wooden paddle-wheel which was ten feet high 
had got into disrepair, and at a riverside town 
where we stopped some coloured carpenters were 
at work fitting new wooden parts into her, whilst 
close - cropped Negroes with coal -dusted skulls 
shovelled coal aboard from a lighter. We had 
three wooden decks rolling with small freight for 
tiny places in Louisiana, Mississippi State, and 
Arkansas. In the cabins were huge family bed- 
steads, and no locks on the doors. When the 
wheel was repaired and the time came for 
departure the Negro crew deserted en masse, and 
the captain, with the unlighted cigar which he 



XV UP THE MISSISSIPPI 289 

had rolled and bitten in his capacious mouth all 
day, stood on the bank and accosted all and 
sundry, begging them to come aboard and 
work on the ship. Meanwhile in a quayside hut 
Negro girls were " shimmying " as they brought 
in food for their coloured boys, and our erstwhile 
crew was heard singing and shouting. Only 
next morning did we get enough hands, and at 
the misty dawn when the river was so still that 
it looked like an unbroken sheet of ice we raised 
anchor and plunged outward again. In the main 
current whole trees were seen to be floating, and 
our wheel might easily strike one of them and 
get broken again. We sat down to breakfast, 
the eight passengers : one was a judge, another 
a district attorney, a third was an agent for 
timber, and the rest were women. The china at 
table was of different shapes and sizes, and there 
were only three teaspoons — so the rest of the 
passengers were served with tablespoons for their 
coffee. 

Judge T insisted on having a teaspoon 

from the coloured girl who waited on us, but was 
obliged to content himself with the tablespoon 
laid — 

*' Teaspoons is sca'ce," said she. 

We stop at various " landing-places," points 
and creeks and bends, the boat generally coming 
close to shore. A long plank is thrown out, and 
then commences the cake-walk of the Negro 
*' rousters," carrying out all manner of goods — 
in one place it is materials for the building 
of a church — and bringing back cotton-bales or 

u 



m 



290 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xv 

whatever else may be waiting for us. It is a 
sight at which one could gaze spell-bound for 
hours. For the Negroes keep in step and seem 
listening to an inaudible music. They lurch 
with their shoulders, kick out with their flexible 
knees, and whether taking long strides or marking 
time they keep in unison with the whole, their 
heads bent, their eyes half-closed and bleared 
with some inner preoccupation. They are in 
all manner of ragged garments : one has a lilac- 
coloured hat, another an old dressing-gown, 
others are in sloppy blue overalls, some wear 
shabby Cuban hats, and they go screeching and 
singing and dodging knocks on the head, but 
always keeping step with the dance. The 
captain, with yesterday's unUt cigar stuck in 
the side of his mouth, gives directions about 
each bit of freight, using wonderful expressions 
of abuse and otherwise " encouraging " the 
" niggers." Looking at the '* rousters " you 
can easily understand that dancing of a certain 
kind is innate with the Negro and springs from 
him. He has an inborn sense of the beating of 
time which we call rhythm. It is so exaggerated 
that it tilts out ridiculously with his stomach 
and controls inanely his bobbing head and nose 
and dropping eyes. He looks a savage, but he 
is spell-bound. He is completely ilUterate and 
largely unintelligent, but he has solved the 
problem of carrying huge cotton-bales to the 
ship, providing a rhythmical physical stream for 
them to flow upon. It is not half the effort that 
it would be to white people without rhythm. 



XV UP THE MISSISSIPPI 291 

One of the reasons why the Negroes box so 
well is because they do it in the same rhythmical 
way tliey shift these cotton-bales. 

Presently they commence to sing whilst they 
haul up the anchor, and a rowing-boat passing 
us with Negro oarsmen is also choric with bright 
hard rhythmic music. These people understand 
music and time in their bodies, not in their minds. 
Their blood and their nerves have consciousness 
of tempo. 

The many stops in Mississippi State afford 
opportunities of going ashore, picking up wild 
pecan nuts, talking to Negroes at their cabin doors. 
One never sees a white man. This along the 
Mississippi is the real black belt. According 
to the Census the Negro is in a clear majority. 
This causes the Whites to be always appre- 
hensive. The idea prevails that the Black can 
only be kept in his place by terror. As regards 
this point of view the Whites prize above every- 
thing solidarity of opinion. They hold that they 
cannot afford to discuss the matter, and they will 
tolerate no cleavage. In politics all are, of 
course, Democrats, and if the American Demo- 
cratic party is on the whole much less liable to 
" spUts " than the Republican party it is largely 
due to the discipline of the black belt. 

" They outnumber us ten to one," says the 
agent for timber, exaggerating characteristically. 
" It's come to such a point hereabout that they're 
pulling the white women out of their houses. 
It's done every day." 

I could not believe that. 



292 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xv 

" But if a Black attacks a white woman here- 
abouts he is certain to be lynched, and knows it," 
said L 

" Yes, it's the only way." 

" But there is not a lynching every day ? " 

" No." 

" So there are not really so many attacks on 
the women." 

But the day-moth of his thought refused to 
be caught in a logical net. 

*' Did you ever see a man tarred and 
feathered .? " I asked of the district attorney. 

*' No, but I've seen one lynched, and helped 
to lynch him," said he. 

" But lynching isn't very good for legal 
business," I hazarded. 

He at once felt ruffled. 

'* It doesn't make any difference to the Negro," 
said he. '' He hasn't got a soul. They don't go 
to heaven or hell." 

" How do you make that out .? " 

" They're just animals," said he. " They 
were never in the Garden of Eden, for Adam 
and Eve were white. Consequently, as they 
had no part in original sin, they have no share in 
our salvation either. Christ did not come to 
save those who never fell from grace." 

" I never heard that before," said I, and 
was so greatly amused I could not help show- 
ing it. 

The attorney sought me out afterwards with 
Biblical proof. The sons of Cain, it appears, 
took themselves wives from the daughters of 



XV UP THE MISSISSIPPI 293 

men ; these other men were not descended 
from Adam and were probably Negroes — the 
attorney was perfectly serious. The judge, how- 
ever, to whom we referred the matter, was of a 
cynical turn of mind, and chuckled heartily. 
*' I am a subscriber to foreign missions," said he. 
'' If they have not Adam for their father, why do 
we send missionaries to Africa ? " 



One of the chief places which I wished to 
visit was the Negro city of Mound Bayou, in the 
Mississippi Delta. In the blackest part of the 
State of Mississippi this is a city which is entirely 
Negro, possesses a Negro mayor, Negro police- 
men, and, indeed, is entirely without accommo- 
dation for white men. I stayed there a night in 
a Negro hotel where the old wall-paper was in 
hundreds of peeling strips hanging on the walls, 
and everything in the bedroom was broken. 
It is a musical sort of city, all a-jangle with the 
banjo and the brassy clamour of the gramophone. 
Places of amusement are many — the Lyceum, 
the Casino, the Bon-ton cafe (with jazzy music), 
the Luck Coles restaurant, etc. ; one sees many 
advertisements of minstrel shows. But it is a 
working city, and at present, with the high cotton 
prices, it is tasting real prosperity. It is situated 
in the rich land of the Delta, very malarial and 
snake-haunted, and therefore not very suitable 
for white men, but the district produces the 
highest quality of cotton in the United States. 
It is in a way a one-man city, and owes most to 



294 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xv 

Charles Banks, who is one of those agreeable 
and talented African giants, who, like Dr. Moton 
and others, seem to have an unexpected capacity 
for greatness. His energy and calm foresight 
and his money guarantee the gins and the cotton- 
seed-oil factory and the Negro bank, and prob- 
ably the local newspaper and one or other of the 
churches. 

In Mound Bayou is no segregation and no 
racial trouble, and the Negroes show how happily 
they can live when unmolested. It is a type of 
settlement well worth encouraging. The chief 
interest of the city just now is the building of a 
" consolidated school." All the small schools 
are to be pulled down, and the money has been 
subscribed for the building of a handsome new 
school on modern lines. It will be put up facing 
the Carnegie Library Building. I was sorry to 
see the latter devoid of books, and used as a Sunday 
school, but the building was given before the city 
was ready for the responsible work of organising 
and controlling a public library. I talked in the 
Infants' school to a strange array of children with 
heads like marbles, and found a common chord 
in interest and love for animals. We imitated 
together all the animals we knew, and agreed that 
no one who did not love animals ever came to 
anything in this world. But if they loved their 
animals they must love Teacher too. I talked 
in the beautiful Wesleyan church on the differ- 
ence between E pluribus unum and £ pluribus 
duo, but that was to grown-ups — and they were 
so dull, compared with the children. The point 



XV UP THE MISSISSIPPI 295 

was, however, that though the United States 
might fail to obtain unity of race, her peoples, 
white and black and yellow, Teutonic and Slav 
and the rest, could still be one in ideal, 

*' We are trying here to understand the beauty 
of being black," said one of the audience edify- 
ingly. " Solomon's bride herself was black," said 
he. 

Mound Bayou is the pride of Mississippi, as 
far as the black part of it is concerned. The 
crowds that appear when a train comes in remind 
one of similar pictures in Africa. America seems 
to have disappeared and Africa to have been 
substituted. An entirely black South, or even 
one State entirely black, is, however, unthinkable. 
The white man has shed too much blood for his 
ideals there. He can never easily abandon any 
part of it. He must rise to the standard of his 
sacrifices. To my eyes Mound Bayou was a 
little pathetic — like the sort of small establish- 
ment of a woman who has been separated from a 
rich husband through estrangement or desertion. 
It is not quite in the nature of things, and is more 
hke a courageous protest tlian the beginning of 
something new. It stands, however, as a symbol 
of incompatibility of temperament. 

There are many who say that when left to 
himself the Negro shps back from civilisation 
into a primitive state of laziness or savagery, and 
they instance life in Haiti and the supposed failure 
of Liberia. It is said that he does not keep up 
the white man's standard, he is not so strenuous, 
he is not a good organiser, nor dependable. That 



296 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xv 

is not entirely true, but there is some truth in it. 
Mound Bayou is situated in a highly malarial 
region unfitted for white habitation, but being 
surrounded with the best cotton-growing land in 
America, it ought to be exceedingly prosperous. 
The best that can be said is that the local planters 
are in a better plight than their neighbours who 
are intermingled with Whites. Complete financial 
failure has threatened the little city in the past, 
and if it were not for the founder, Mr. Mont- 
gomery, and its financier, Mr. Banks, most of 
the proprietorship must have passed over into 
white hands. To all appearances the Negro 
needs decent white co-operation in business, and 
mixed commercial relationships are better than 
segregated ones. The difiiculty is to find con- 
scientious business Whites who realise that the 
prosperity of the Negro is worth while. The 
fixed idea of the white business man is to fool the 
Negro and exploit him to the last penny. 

Mound Bayou has its own Negro cotton buyers 
who give a fair price for the cotton. But it is 
with the greatest difiiculty that a Negro planter 
can obtain from a white buyer the true market 
price, and it is rare that a landlord who receives 
cotton-bales as rent will take into consideration 
the enhanced price of cotton even though tlie 
enhancement is supposed to be primarily due to 
the smallness of the harvest. Where the white 
man is in control it is true the Negro produces 
more because he has to in order to live, but he is, 
nevertheless, the victim of a systematised swind- 
ling, and he knows it. It is causing a growing 



XV UP THE MISSISSIPPI 297 

discontent among the black peasantry, and I was 
continually told about it. 

One of the worst riots of 19 19 took place on 
the other side of the river — in the State of 
Arkansas, at Elaine. It is also in this so-called 
Delta region. The origin of the riot was rooted 
in the economic problem. The white buyers and 
landlords had been consistently defrauding the 
Negro countryside by overlooking the enhanced 
value of cotton. Cotton had risen in price from 
a pre-war average of ten cents a pound to twenty- 
eight cents in 19 17, and actually to forty cents 
in the current year. Formerly, it was generally 
represented to the Negro that he was always deep 
in debt for his " rations " or his rent. The white 
policy was to keep the Negro in debt. It was 
never the custom to render him accounts or to 
argue with him when he claimed more than 
was handed him — 

" You had a fine crop, you're just about 
straight," was a common greeting in the autumn 
ofi9i9. 

But with the prolific Delta crop of cotton and 
a quadruple price, the discontent of the Negro 
can be imagined. It was intense, and was 
growing. 

There are two versions of the outcome of it. 
One is that a firm of white lawyers approached some 
of the Negro planters with an idea of taking the 
matter to court and seeing what could be obtained 
in redress. The other is that the Negroes *' got 
together," organised a body called " The Farmers' 
Progressive Union," which then approached the 



298 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xv 

firm of lawyers on its own account. I incline 
to think that the former is the more probable. 
The white firm thought there was money to be 
made from fighting Negro claims. Some of 
the Negroes were actually agreed to take the 
matter to a Federal Grand Jury and charge the 
Whites with frustration of the Fifteenth Amend- 
ment to the Constitution. 

The Negroes were undoubtedly daring, and 
held public meetings and used sufficient bravado 
to alarm the local white population. The rumour 
flew from farm to farm that the Negroes were 
plotting an insurrection. Some one discovered a 
heap of rifles stacked where they had been left 
and forgotten when the Armistice had interrupted 
drilling. This gave the necessary colour to the 
idea. Besides the rusty rifles, the Negroes were 
seen to be not without firearms of one kind 
or another. The Negro loves weapons as an 
Oriental loves jewellery. Shot-guns and revolvers 
in plenty are to be found in the cabins of the 
coloured country folk. The Whites put up a 
provocateur as before a pogrom in Russia. He 
started firing on Negroes at random in the Elaine 
streets. Then two white officials attempted to 
break into a Negro meeting, resorted to arms, 
and were met by firing in return. One of the 
Whites was killed, the other wounded. This started 
the three days of destruction in Phillips County. 
The whole Negro population was rounded up by 
white troops and farmers with rifles. Machine- 
guns were even brought into play against an 
imaginary black army. A great number of 



XV UP THE MISSISSIPPI 299 

Negroes were put in a stockade under military- 
arrest, many were killed, many wounded. And 
three hundred were placed in jail and charged with 
riot and murder. No Whites were arrested. The 
Governor, a Mr. Brough, was largely responsible 
for this method of investigating the alleged con- 
spiracy of the Negroes to make an insurrection. 
The whole occurrence was astonishingly ugly, 
and it was followed by ten-minute trials before 
exclusively white juries, and swift sentences to 
electrocution for some Negro prisoners, and to 
long terms of penal servitude for others. The 
riot and the trials so exasperated Negroes through- 
out the United States that there is no doubt a 
Federal Commission of impartial men might 
well have been appointed to investigate the 
whole affair, both as regards its inception and 
as regards its military culmination and its after- 
math of trial and punishment. As it is, though 
Governor Brough says to the Negroes, " You 
did plan an insurrection," and though the Whites 
of Elaine may feel happier and more secure, 
it is an obvious truism that the white populations 
of other States cannot be feeling more secure, 
because of it, and that the Negroes in other 
districts feel less secure — they feel the need to 
arm. It has caused a great increase in public 
insecurity. Perhaps because of this the riot 
has been more discussed than other riots. Some- 
what shocked and fretful, the Governor, who is 
probably a brisk business man, and in no way 
like one of those more neurotic Governors of 
Russian provinces who occur in Andreef's tales. 



300 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xv 

called a meeting. Some four hundred Whites 
and tamed Negroes were brought together to see 
what could be done to improve race-relationship. 
This was a month after these events. 

The Commercial Appeal of Memphis reports 
the Governor's remarks : 

This meeting has been called for the purpose 
of a heart-to-heart discussion of the relations between 
the white people and the negroes of the State. These 
relations have become strained, especially by the recent 
rebellion in Phillips County. I say " rebellion" 
advisedly and without qualifications, for it was an 
insurrection and a damnable one. 

And I want to say in the beginning that Arkansas 
is going to handle her own problems. I do not 
intend to go to New York City or to Topeka, Kansas. 
When I want advice from negroes, I shall ask it from 
Arkansas negroes, and when I want similar advice 
from white people, I shall get it from the white people 
of Arkansas. 

I also wish to say that I do not intend to be 
intimidated by any publications or any letters I may 
receive. I have already received several letters which 
said that if I permitted the execution of these twelve 
Negroes from Phillips County to go through, I would 
be assassinated. One of the letters contained a crude 
drawing of a coffin, represented to be my own in case 
the negroes were electrocuted. I received one letter 
to-day which stated that the entire city of Helena 
would be burned if these negroes went to their death. 
But I repeat that I will not be intimidated by any 
outside influence in this question. Our own questions 
must be settled within the boundaries of our State, 
and I believe that there are enough representative 
negroes in the State to do this. 



XV UP THE MISSISSIPPI 301 

So said the Governor, but it is rather a ques- 
tion whether in these days of Leagues of Nations 
and Alliances and *' sympathies " one State like 
Arkansas, v^ashed partly by a great river, can 
live entirely v^ithin its own boundaries and 
without outside consideration. 

The mighty Mississippi rolls onward, bearing 
the spars and the sands of half the States of 
America to the sea. And after the massacre at 
Elaine, for some days, dead bodies of Negroes 
were washed up on other shores. Doleful 
messengers, these, on the river of Time. 



XVI 

AT VICKSBURG 

I SUPPOSE not many make the pilgrimage of 
America ; land in New England with the 
Puritans or sail up the James River with the 
Cavaliers, linger reflectively at Mount Vernon, 
consider Boston Harbour and the tax on tea, 
pause at Bunker Hill, and so on — or visit Sumter 
where the Stars and Stripes were hauled down 
by the South, and then make the tour of the 
war which followed. It would be worth while — 
to think a little at Gettysburg and think again 
in Georgia, walking perchance to the sea after 
General Sherman. No such pilgrimage would 
be complete without riding the great mother- 
river of America, and it occurred to me that a 
fitting place in which to end a pilgrimage, as 
far as the South is concerned, might be Vicksburg, 
with its vast National Cemetery of the dead of the 
Civil War. It is one of the most remarkable 
war shrines in any land. But more than that, it is 
a solemn reminder of all the brothers' blood that 
can be shed out of pride and vainglory of heart and 
an obstinate refusal on the part of one section of 

a nation to follow the guiding star of the whole. 

302 



XVI AT VICKSBURG 



303 



Vicksburg is a beautiful city built on a steep 
cliff, continually in sight of the broad brown 
passive streams of the Delta and the strips of 
forest which break up the waters. Above it all 
are the beautiful lawns and terraces of the 
National Cemetery rising from the Mississippi 
shore, and the dead lie in view, as it were, of the 
broad loveliness of the river. Sixteen thousand 
Americans hallow the soil. They are mostly 
of Grant's army, but over and above there is 
another burying- ground with many of his 
enemies. No vulgar notice warns you not to pick 
the flowers. Pick them if you will. But poems 
and prayers are scattered everywhere, and still 
as you go you pause and read, and pause and 
read again : 

On Fame's eternal camping-ground 

Their silent tents are spread, 
And glory guards with solemn round 

The bivouac of the dead. 

Tiny cubes of white marble give the soldiers' 
numbers and names and regiments. It reminds 
one now somehow of the great cemeteries of 
France. 

The mighty troop, the flashing blade. 

The bugle's stirring blast, 
The charge, the dreadful cannonade. 

The din, the shout, are past, 

says the next notice-board. And yet, are they 
past ? Are they not always going on — as long as 
the cause for which the soldiers fought remains ? 
They fought for unity. They fought also for 
freedom. They had to do what fanatical old 



304 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES xvi 

John Brown set out to do at Harper's Ferry, 
try to release the land from that which was 
abominable in the sight of the Lord. They 
strove to do it by righteous force. They were 
martyrs on the altar of their country. And there 
is no doubt their country loved them for their 
devotion. No land honours more its heroic dead 
than does America. It is no mean thing to have 
died for America. The smoke still rises to 
heaven where her men were slain, and it will 
rise until their cause is completely vindicated. 

Down below in the city, at the corner of Clay 
and Farmer Streets, last year they burned a Negro 
to death, suspending him from a tree over a slow 
fire. According to the evening paper, " the 
flesh on the body began to crinkle and blister. 
The face of the Negro became horribly distorted 
with pain. He assumed an attitude of prayer, 
raising his palms together." 

When the victim was dead, the leader of the 
mob cried out : " Have you had enough fun, 
boys ? " And they cut him down. 

That Negro is with John Brown and the 
repentant thief and many another such, in Para- 
dise. But those who did the deed are damned. 
The Negroes have been fleeing from Vicksburg 
ever since this terrible day. But the dead of 
the old war remain in these great cemeteries. 
Something has been effected : the children of 
the slaves are become free, but the children of 
those who used to be masters still take a Negro 
now and then and burn him to death. 

I sat on a pyramid of lawn and looked down 



XVI AT VICKSBURG 



305 



to the river. There was a din of saw-mills. 
The Memphis train went howling past, and then 
with a petty rush on the road below, an electric 
trolley car from Vicksburg. The world went 
on in seeming peace. A throng of Negro work- 
men holding on to one another came singing 
along the way. They were not slaves, any way. 
They had life, the beginnings of new life. 
Though fraught with grave dangers, impeded by 
prejudice and hate and a thousand difficulties — 
nevertheless it was new life that they had. And 
those who died to give it them lie in these quiet 
graves whilst the river of life goes past. They 
did not mean that the gift of freedom should 
be tarnished. Most of them would be ready to 
die again to complete the gift they gave. And 
John Brown himself, if he should reappear, would 
not be sweetened by what he saw happening in 
the world. His soul goes marching on, but it is 
still the soul of vengeance and wrath. 



X 



I 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

A short bibliography may not come amiss. — Author. 

BOOKS 

Othello. Shakespeare. 

The Ancient Lowly. Ward. 

Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39. By 
Frances Anne Kemble. Harpers. 1863. 

A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States in 1853-54. By Frederick 
Law Olmsted. 

A Journey in the Cotton Slave States. By the same. 

The Negro in the New World. By Sir Harry Johnston. 1910. 

Liberia. By the same. 1906. 

Up from Slavery. By Booker T. Washington. 

The Souls of Black Folk. By Dr. Du Bois. Constable. 

Darkwater. By the same. Constable. 1920. 

Finding a Way Out. By Dr. Moton. Fisher Unwin. 1920. 

Fifty Years, and other Poems. By James Welldon Johnston. 

The Congo, and other Poems. By Vachel Lindsay. 1919. 

Polished Ebony. By Octavus Roy Cohen. Dodd Mead & Co. 1919. 

Hoodoo Face, and other Stories. By E. K. Means. Putnam. 1920. 

The Rismg Tide of Colour. By Stoddart. Scribner. 1920. 

White and Black. By Sir George Campbell, M.P. 1879. 

Notes on the Negro Problem. A Philosophy of Race Relations. 
Some Mississippi Valley Problems. Pamphlets by Mr. Bolton 
Smith of Memphis, Tennessee. 

The Negro Year Book. Published annually from Tuskcgee Institute, 
Tuskegee, Alabama. 

307 X 2 



3o8 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES 

Thirty Years of Lynching, 1 889-191 8. Published by the N.A.A.C.P., 
70 Fifth Avenue, New York. 

Burning at the Stake in the United States, and other pamphlets. 
Published by the N.A.A.C.P., New York. 

An Heir of Slaves. By William Pickens. Published by the Pilgrim 
Press, Boston. 

The New Negro. By William Pickens. Published by the Neale 
Publishing Co., 440 Fourth Avenue, New York. 



NEGRO PERIODICALS 

The Crisis. (Monthly, i 5 cents.) 70 Fifth Avenue, New York. 

The Negro World. (Weekly.) 56 135th Street, New York. 
Foreign subscription, two dollars a year. 

The Negro Messenger. 

The Chicago Defender. 



INDEX 



Accent of Southerners, loi, 167 

Actors, coloured, 70 seq. 

Adam and Eve, Negroes, 184 ; not 
Negroes, 292 

Adams, John Quincy, his opinion 
of Desdemona, 80 

Address, to Norfolk Negroes, 42 ; 
to Chattanooga Negroes, 108 ; to 
Mound Bayou Negroes, 294 

Africa, 5, 48, 220, 268-9 

Agitators, 65 

Alabama, 24, 181 seq. 

All-black omnibuses, 104 

Almon, 127 

America, character of, r ; her naval 
programme, 29 ; Negroes proud 
of, 275 _ 

Americanisms, 50, 81, 133 

American Legion, 236 

Angels, black and white, 183 

Anglo-Saxon, addiction to race- 
hatred, 159 

Animal nature of Negroes, 20, 133, 
149, 197-8 

"Anti-kink," 31, 156, 187 

Aristocracy of American Negro, 
274 

Arkansas, 104, 288 

Athens, Georgia, burning at, 203 

Atlanta, 97, no, 113, 177 ; burning 
of, 112 ; flight from, 112 ; re- 
union at, 58 ; university, 59 

Atrocities, 162 

Augusta, 117, 130 

B , Rev., of Norfolk, 31 seq. 

Bacchanalia of Negro girls, 74 
Baltimore, 24-5, 31, 64 
Banker, a Negro, 34 seq. 
Banks, Charles, 294 



"Beauty Parlors," 31 
Beggars, none on the streets, 99 
Bible, Negro knowledge of, 14, 16, 

62, 82, 129 
" Billy Yanks," 123 
Birmingham, Alabama, 96, 103, 

176, 182 
Blackest cities, 176-7 
Black Internationalism, 278 
Blacklegs, 48, 103 
Blackness, 29 
Black, pride in being, 195 
Black Star Line, 275 seq. 
" Blind tigers," 100 
Bloodhounds, destruction of, by 

Sherman's army, 163 ; on trail 

of Negroes, 12, 30, 164 
" Blues," 73 
Bocas del Toro, 277 
Boll-weevil, destroying cotton, 139, 

Bolsheviks, 65-6, 280 ; reason why 

Negroes are opposed to, 100 
Bootlegging, 48 
Botany class, 88 
Boxing, 44-5, 291 
Breeding of Negroes, 9 
Bridges, 144 
British Empire compared with 

United States, 270, 275 
Brooks and Lowndes Counties, 

Georgia, terrible happenings in, 

205-7 
Brough, Governor, 298-301 
Brown, Governor of Georgia in 

1864, 142 
Brown, John, 8, 17, 63, 259, 304-5 j 

last words of, i8 ; song of, 113, 

119 ; soul of, 170 
" Buck nigger," 197 



309 



3IO CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES 



Buffalo Creek, 143 

Buford, the Soviet Ark, 66 

Building and contracting, 34, 234 

Burleigh, Harry T., 87 

Burlesques, 99 

Burning them to death, 12, loo-ioi, 

104, 161-3, 198, 201, 206, 226, 

243, 280, 304 
Burroughs, Miss Nanny, 25 

Cabins, 133, 137-140, 144, 158 

" Can the Ethiopian change his skin 

or the leopard his spots ? " io8 
Cardiff, race-riot at, 279, 282 
Carlyle and the Negroes, 174-5 
Carnegie a good friend to the Negro, 

39 
Carnegie Libraries, 39, 93, 294 

Catholicism and Negroes, 231 

Census, 176-7, 291 

Chain-gang, 157 

Chapman, the Rev. Hugh, 42 

Chattanooga, 25, 96, 102-9 

Chemists, 106 

Chicago Defender, 208 

Chippers, 46 

Choirs, 106 

Christianity, 4, 13, 81, 259 

" Christianity alone can save 

Colour," 108, 259 
Christian Science, 194 
Church, education for, 49 
Churches, Negro, 31, 33, 81, 107, 

166 ; White, 142 
Cigar-wrapping, 225 
Cincinnati, Douglass School, 258, 

265 
City Manager, 29 
Clapping during prayers, 82 
" Cleaning up coloured town," 29 
Climate and the Negro, 216 
Cock-fighting, 147-8 
Cohen, Octavus Roy, 190 
Cohen, Mr. W. L., 237 
Cohen-Bell, Mrs., 237 
Collection-taking, 108 
" Colorphobia," 256 
Coloured People's Brotherhoods, 47 
Comic songs of the Negroes, 73 
Commercial Appeal, 300 
Committees on racial strife, 193 
Congress and the Negro, 213 



Conyers, 124 



\^onyers, 124 

Cotton, 114, 120, 132, 137-40, 144, 
222, 293 ; bales as rent, 153 ; 



ware- 



32 



222, 293 , UdiCb as ICUl, 

buyers, 296 ; pickers, 140 ; 
houses, 168 
" Couldn't hear nobody prayin', 

Countryside in South, 120, i 
Covington, 127-8, 142 
Credit checks, 1 54 
Creoles, 231-3, 236, 284-5 
Crisis newspaper, 63, 208 
Criterions, 34 
Cruelty, 11-13, 161, 206 
Crusade against tobacco, i 
Cuba, 277, 286 



42 



Daily Herald, 279 

Dancing, 74, 290, 291 

Darhwater, 262 

Decatur, 119 

Declaration of Independence, 2 

Demobilisation, 92 

Democracy, 54 

Democrats, 177-9, 291 

Dentists, 49, 95 

Desdemona's marriage, 79 

Discrimination, against Negro actors 
on White stage, 78-9 ; in courts 
of justice, 68-94 ; in equipment 
of schools, 51, 188 ; in public 
admitted to fairs, 96 ; in railway 
carriages, 60 ; in registers and 
directories, 40 ; in repair of roads, 
36-7 ; in trading, 36 ; in use of 
cemeteries, 125 

Dock labourers, 225 

Doctors, 37 

" Don't walk if you can ride," 133 

Drink, 92, 142, 144 5 and race 
rioting, 97 ; and the Negro, 198 

Druggists, 105 

Dumas, 50 

Dyer, General, 279, 282 

Eatonton, birthplace of Joel 
Chandler Harris, 138, 150 ; 
factory, 137 

Ebenezer, 3, 166 

Education, 49, 121, 269 ; endow- 
ment of, by Whites, 49 ; said to 
be bad for Negroes, 199 



INDEX 



311 



Elaine, Arkansas, 104 ; riot at, 297 

seq. 
Embarkation of American troops, 29 
Empire compared with American 

Republic, 270 
E pluribus unum, 294 
Exodus northward, 214, 221 

Fairs, 96 ; Knoxville Fair, 97 ; 

Atlanta Fair, 115 
Farmers' Progressive Union, 297 
" Feed us. Lord ! " 82 
Fifteenth Amendment, 180 
" Fighting Fifteenth," 255 
Flogging, 7-8, 205-6 
Florida, 166, 223 seq, 
" Force BiU," 178 
Force, gospel of, 258, 266-7 
" Four-minute men," 188 
France, Negroes' sentiment for, 69, 

240 
Franchise, 171, 174-5, ^73 
" Freedom is never a bequest but a 

conquest," 35 
French, at New Orleans, 232 ; 

teaching of, 51 
French brides, 158 
Funerals, 106 
" Futures," 138 

Garvey, Hon, Marcus, 276 
Georgia, no seq. ; laying waste of, 

123 ; lynching record, 202 ; 

marching through, 25, no seq. ; 

not rich in food or livestock, 139 ; 

settlement of the colony, 3 
Gins, 138 

" Give us back our niggers," 220 
God, black, 185 

" Go down, Moses," 15, 87, 215 
Gospel of " Be glad ! " 72 ; of 

force, 258, 266-7 
Gospel shout, 84, 129 
Governors and lynching, 206-7, 

246-7 
Grant, General, 116 
Green, Grand Master, 234 
Griggs, Rev. Sutton, quoted, 179 
Grimke, Archibald, his poem, 255 

Hampton Institute, 49, 181, 263 ; 
singers, 86 



Harlem, 64 

Harper's Ferry, 8, 17, 304 

Henson, Mat, 216 

Hindus and Negroes, 271-2, 273 

Hoffmann, Professor, 272 

" Holy Folks," 33 

Hood, General, 112 

Hoodooing, 7'5 

" Hot Dog," 44 

Houses, 97, 158 

Houston, 255 

Howard University, 25 

Humour of the Negroes, 70, 73, 99, 

249-50 
Hnxyl, 83 

Illegitimacy, 9 

" In God we trust : all others pay 

cash," 166 
" Injustice is the greatest agitator," 

66-7 
Insurance Companies, 106, 237 
Intermarriage of Black and White, 

3.5 . 
Intimidation, 133 

Ireland, 280 

Jack Johnson's contest with Jeffries, 

45 
Jacksonville, 223 seq. 

Jack Tars, coloured, 43 

Jamaica, 277 

James River, 25, 55 

Jamestown, 25 

Jew lynched at Milledgeville, 142 

Jews compared with Negroes, 218, 

244-5 J friendly relationship, 37, 

60 
" Jim Crow " cars, 31, 60, 104, 183, 

258, 369 
"Johnny Rebs," 123 
Johnson, James Welldon, 246 
Johnston, Sir Harry, 271 
Jones, Lawrence, 265 
Joseph's Bondage, 106 
yournal and Guide, 53 
Journalism, Negroes' passion for, 53 
Jubilation of the Negroes, 126, 152 
Judges, 94 

K , Professor, 188 

Kandali, 157 



312 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES 



" Keep smiling," 8i 

Kelly, Benjamin K., his warning, 

211-12 

Kelly, Captain, 135 

Kemble, Fanny, quoted, 10, 80 

King of England and Negroes, 271, 

274 
Knights of Pythias, 234 
Knoxville, 25, 90-98 

Labour, 47, 222, 282, 283 

Lafayette Players, 70 

Lamar, Senator, 178 

Landowners, 153 

Lawyer H , 93-5 

Leadership, 261 seq. 

League of Nations and the Negro, 
39, 65, 69, 161, 280, 301 

Lee, Robert E., no 

Liberia, no, 220, 221, 274-5, ^95 

Liberty Club, 43 

Libraries, 39, 61, 93, 105, 143, 144 

Lincoln, Abraham, 110,128,170-71, 
220 

Lindsay, Vachel, 85, 100 

" Listen to the lambs," 87 

Lithonia, 122 

Liverpool, race-riot at, 279 

Livingstone, 271 

Lloyd, Bishop, 274 

Lodge, Senator, 178 

Look-out Mountain, no 

Looting in Georgia, u8, 136, 146-7 

Lord's Prayer, 82 

Louisiana, 233, 240, 286 seq. 

Louisville, 148-9 

Lust, 13 

Lynch, Charles, of Virginia, i, 61 

Lynch, Mr., of Lynchburg, 136 

Lynchburg, Georgia, 136 ; Vir- 
ginia, 61 

Lynching, i, 39-40, 80, 91-2, 100, 
150,257,263; "always justified 
and mistakes never made," 62 ; 
a popular sport, 200 ; associated 
with cotton - growing districts, 
222 ; at Jacksonville, 224 ; at 
Macon, Georgia, 104 ; at Milan, 
Georgia, 204, 264 ; at Mont- 
gomery, Alabama, 104 ; at 
Ocmulgee, 203 ; at Omaha, 
Nebraska, 103 ; boasting of. 



209 ; compared in different 
countries, 201 ; cause of, 159, 
198, 203 ; condemned by South- 
ern bishop, 212 ; in Alabama, 
192 ; in Georgia, 202 seq. ; in 
Mississippi, 292 ; rare in Vir- 
ginia, 57 ; revenge for, 246 

Macon, 130, 141 ; lynching at, 
161 

" Make 'em die slow," 12, 202 

Marching through Georgia, no seq. 

Marines, 55 

Maury, Lieut., 28 

Mayflower, 2 

Mayor Smith defies lynchers, 103-4 

" Me make plenty nigger for 
Massa," 9 

Memphis, 26, 176, 257, 284 

Men who had sold their voices, 97 

Mexico, Gulf of, 26 

Milan, Georgia, lynching at, 204-5 ; 
Moton's appeal to President con- 
cerning, 264 

Milledgeville, 126, 138, 141-3 

Millen, 148, 163 

Miller, Professor Kelly, 25 

Mined roads in 1864, 164 

Mississippi River, 26, 227, 284 seq. 

Mobile, 226 

Montgomery, Hon. L, founder of 
Mound Bayou, 296 

Morality, 10, 22, 67, 94, 159-60, 
237-9, 251, 278-9 

Morel, E. D., 278 

Moton, Dr. R. R., 181-2, 294; his 
letter to President Wilson, 263 

Motor business, 36 

Motors, 133, 144 

Mound Bayou, 26, 284, 293 seq. 

Mulattoes, 191-2 

Murders, 92 ; said to follow re- 
vivals, 86 

Musical comedy, 74 seq. 

Musical instruments uncommon, 99 

Music of the Negroes, 15, 41, 87, 
106, 289 

N.A.A.C.P., 208, 235, 258 
Nashville, 177 

Near Whites, psychology of, 32 
Negro Messenger, 208 



INDEX 



313 



Negro regiment, persecution of, by 

civilians, 256 
Negro World, 276 
New Brunswick, 26, 222-3 
New Inverness, 3 
New Orleans, 20, 99, 139, 227 seq., 

252, 285 
Newport News, 43 seq. 
Newspaper accounts of lynchings, 

208 
Newspapers of the Negroes, 53, 208, 

209, 279, 283 
New York, 26, 276 
" Niggers," 174, 256 
Nigger shows, 99 
Ninety-second Division, 55, 106 
Noise, 115 

Non-resistance recommended, 267 
Non-Union shops, 102 
Norfolk, Virginia, 28 seq. 
North Pole, Negro at, 216 
North, the, 26, 128, 216-19 

Ocmulgee, burning at, 203 

Odour of Negroes, 30 

Ogeechee River, 148 

" Old Yank," story of, 124 

Olmsted, quoted, 6 ; his travels, 24, 59 

Omaha, riot at, 103 

Open shops, 186 

Orange groves, 225-6 

Orators, 64 seq., 81, 107, 185 

Othello, 78-80 

" OughtnQ?,% and iVness," 65 

" Outnumbered," 199, 291 

Ownership, psychology of, 19 

Palm Beach, 223 

Panama, 277 

Pastors, coloured, 33, 81, 184-5 ; 
white, 34 

Patent medicine, 106 

Peary, Commander, his Negro ser- 
vant, 216 

Pensacola, 26, 226 ; Negro burned 
at, 226 

Peonage, chain-gang, 157 ; credit 
checks, 154 ; hiring out of 
criminals, 151, 155; mortgage 
of crop, 155, 297 ; paying of 
fines, 205 ; South African, 269 ; 
usage of" truck," 154 



Philadelphia, 24, 280 

Photographs of lynching crowd, 

100, 207 
Pickens, Dean William, 64, 246, 265 
Pinelanders, 5 
Piney Woods School, 265 
Pioneers of America, i, 56 
Platonic love of Black and White, 

192 
Police and Negroes, 266 
Polyanna acted by Negroes, 72 
Poor Whites, loo-ioi 
Port Limon, 277 
Port Royal, 277 
Potomac, 25 

Prayer, 82 ; alleged failure of, 108 
Progress of Negroes, 68-9, 173-4, 

242 
Prohibition, 48, 99, 142, 227, 275 
Propaganda, 208, 275 
Provocateurs, 298 
Provocation, 92 
Pushkin, 50 
Pythian Temple, 234 

Race-hatred, 70 

Radicals, 66 

Rape, 203, 251, 279 ; of black 

v7omen, 10 
Reconstruction period after Civil 

War, 172 
Red Cross " drives," 54 
" Reds," 267 
Religious hysteria, 85 
Republicans, 177-9 5 Negro party 

of, 237 
Resentment, 22, 210, 243 seq., 247, 

266 
Revenge, 209-11 
Revivals, 81, 102 
Revolution, 246-7 
Rhodesia, 279 

Richmond, Virginia, 25, 59, 177 
Rincom, 165 
Riots, racial, 197 ; at Chicago, 267 ; 

at Elaine, 104 ; at Knoxville, 91 
Riveters, 46 
Roberts, Sergeant Needham, his 

story, 252 
Roosevelt, Colonel, 179 
Roosevelt, President, 179 
" Rousters," 289 



314 CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES 



Russia, 23, 214, 244-5, 298 ; ballet, 
74 ; serfs, 23, 158 

St. John in the Desert, 86 

St. Mihiel, taking of, 55 

Sandersville, 145 

" Saul hid himself among the stuff," 

83 
Savannah, 3, 80, 117, 139, 153, 167, 

168 
" Save " propaganda, 47 
Schools, 50, 143 
Scott, Emmett, 25 
" Senator Cordill," 288 
Sewing, 52 
Sexual perversity, of Blacks, 94, 251, 

278-9 ; of Whites, 10, 22, 159-60, 

199 
Shady Dale, 153 
Sherman, General, 25 ; always 

carried two of everything, 131 ; 

character of, 112; his genius, 

145 ; his march to the sea, no 

seq. ; said to be now in hell, 136 ; 

Sherman's " bummers," 124, 136, 

146-7 
Shillady, Mr. John R., 235-6 
Shipbuilding yards, 29 
Silas Marner, 50 
Slave Market at Louisville, 149 
Slavery, i seq., 19-23, 111-12, 173, 

243-5 J t>ad for South, 135 
Slaves, first brought to America, 2 ; 

price of, 6 ; owners of, 1 9 
Slocum, General, 123 
Smith, Bolton, 257, 265 
Smith, E. P., Mayor of Omaha, 103, 

227 
Soldiers, 1 10 ; beaten to death, 202 ; 

lynched at Pope City, 202 ; of 

Negro regiments, 55, 107, 158, 

240-1, 250, 252-4 
" Solid South," 177-8 
Souls of Black Folk, 261-2 
South Africa, 269-70 ; Union of, 273 
South Carolina, 4-5 
Southern point of view, 52, 62, 80, 

88, 89, 121, 196 seq., 211 
South, the character of, 17, 19, 21, 

89-91, 101-2, iir, 132 
" Soviet Ark," 66 
Spartacus, 23, 245 



Speed merchants, 125 

Spirituals, 15, 54, 86 

"Spots," 138 

Springfield, Georgia, 157 

" Square deal," 179 

Stars and Stripes, Radicals made to 

kiss, no 
Steel, 102, 185 seq. 
Stone Mountain, 120 
Stonewall Jackson, 18, 127 
Streets blocked with cotton, 138, 

144 ; White streets and Black, 

36-7 
Strikes, 48, 103 
Sugar plantations, 284-6 
Sunday, Rev. Billy, 102 
Swan churches, 165-6 
Sylvania, 165 

" Take me, shake me, don't let me 
sleep," 43 

Teachers, 52, 88, 189 

Tennessee, 25, 89 seq. 

Texas and the Negro, 235, 255 

" That which is born of the flesh is 
flesh," 108 

Theatre, 70 seq., 234 

The Leopard's Spots, 121 

" The One Thing Needful," 3 

" There's mean fellows on every 
side," 136 

" Thirteen black soldiers," 255 

Tidewater Bank, 34 

Tobacco industry, 53, 62 

Torrance, Ridgely, 73 

Tramping, 100 

" Truck," 153-4 

Tuskegee Institute, 18 1-2, 265 

" Twenty-four black girls can't 
make one mulatto baby by them- 
selves," ID 

Uncle Tom's Cabin, izi, 151 

" Underground Railway," 17 

Undertaking business, 53, 105, 237 

Unions, 47 

Union shops, 186 

Universal Negro Improvement 

Association, 276 
Universities, 50 

Vaudeville, 99 



INDEX 



315 



Veterans, 58 
Vice-crusades, 227 
Vicksburg, 20, 26, 284, 302-5 
Virginia, 19 seq. 
Virginia College, 63 
Vocational teaching, 49 
Vote of Negroes prevented 
physical force, 1 76 



by 



Walker, Madame, inventor of " anti- 
kink," 31 
War effort, of the Negroes, 54, 69, 

241 ; of Liberia, 275 
War of North and South, 17, 58, 

no, 259, 303-5 ; cause of, 129 
War with Germany, compared with 

war of North and South, 134, 136; 

influencing Negroes' fate, 105, 180 
Washington, Booker T., 50, 63, 181, 

189, 261-2 ; received at White 

House, 179 
Washington, D.C., 24-5, 27, 177 



Washington, Georgia, lynching at, 
104 

" Watch out ; this party's 
coloured ! " 40 

" 'Way down in Tennessee," 27 

" We don't want to mix in with 
white people," 60 

" We love our niggers and under- 
stand them," 114, 121, 197 

West Indies, 268, 276 

Wheeler's cavalry, 143 

White, Walter, 246 

White women, 192, 198, 252, 291 

Wilson, President, 65, 178, 263 

Womanhood, idealised in America, 



224 
Women's 



and Negro 



suffrage 

women, 241 
" Working like a nigger," 174 
World aspect of Negro movement, 

69, 221, 268 
Wrath of the Lord, 118, 259 



THE END 



Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinbuygh. 



BOOKS BY STEPHEN GRAHAM 

A TRAMP'S SKETCHES. 

WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS TO JERU- 
SALEM. 

WITH POOR EMIGRANTS TO AMERICA. 

THE WAY OF MARTHA AND THE WAY 
OF MARY. 

PRIEST OF THE IDEAL. 

THE QUEST OF THE FACE. 

In these six books published by Macmillan & Co. will be found 
a sequence of religious expression. 

Other Volumes 

UNDISCOVERED RUSSIA . An interpretation of Russia. 

CHANGING RUSSIA ... An account of the forces 

making for change. 

A VAGABOND IN THE 

CAUCASUS A first book. 



RUSSIA AND THE WORLDl 

RUSSIA IN 1916 .... 

THROUGH RUSSIAN 
CENTRAL ASIA . . . 



Dealing with the War and 
Russian Imperial Politics. 



Critical Studies 
A PRIVATE IN THE 

GUARDS The life of the Army. 

CHILDREN OF THE SLAVES. 



PRESS OPINIONS 

A PRIVATE IN THE GUARDS. By Stephen 
Graham. 

EVENING STANDARD.— '' Kmongsi all the literature of the 
war A Private i?t the Guards will take a foremost place. A born 
writer and an observer of long experience and practice, he saw the 
war at first hand and employed all his powers in passing on to 
others what he had seen." 

SPECTA TOR. — " It leaves untouched no essential aspect of a 
soldier's life in war time. Many portions of it will never be sur- 
passed. . . . The opening chapter should rank as one of the finest 
passages in our language." 

NA TION. — " It is the unaccustomed eye that penetrates into the 
truth of things ; the idealist temperament that can judge of practical 
absurdities ; and the master of language that can say what he 
thinks." 

MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.— '' K very accurate and valu- 
able picture." 

DUNDEE ADVERTISER.—'' A genius in khaki. That a man 
so gifted should have endured the things that are set down here 
stabs one with a fresh and frightful sense of the cruelty imposed by 
war. Mr. Graham invites no pity ; his sole purpose is to describe 
actualities, and he does so with an effect which imposes an almost 
physical pain. You realise anew the power which resides in the pen 
of a master of words." 

THE TIMES. — " Even the most surfeited with war books will 
find a great deal of interest in reading what Mr. Stephen Graham 
has to tell. Few accounts of life in the ranks have appeared which 
are so striking and so just. The tale is told without any exaggera- 
tion or undue parade, which makes it all the more valuable. With a 
restraint of language and even of emotion which is a very welcome 
contrast to so much of the verbal hysteria produced by the war, a 
man of letters tells how the life of a recruit and a fighting man in the 
Guards struck a cultivated man. . . . Nothing is more striking than 
Mr. Graham's insistence on the importance of loyalty and discipline 
which he learnt in a far harder school than any officer : nothing is 
more obvious than his intense pride in his regiment, the finest 
marching unit in the Army. This very acceptance of the cardinal 
virtues of a good soldier as inconti'overtible gives all the more weight 
to his criticisms. Every soldier ought to read thej/i, and every one 
who having honoured the Army looks forward to its improvement as 
a calHng for men of the future should lay them to heart." 

WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.— ''The writer is a skilled ob- 
server. He perceives, however, not only with his eyes — though 

2 



PRESS OPINIONS— C^^///V///^v/. 

these are wide awake — but also with a practised sympathy and under- 
standing. He transcribes, indeed, his own sensations, but these he 
conveys to the reader in cinematograph pictures of barrack and drill- 
yard, company, battalion, and regiment, in which the writer as an 
individual is not visible." 

ST. JOHN ERVINE IN ''THE OBSERVER."—'' T)&t^^\y 
interesting and in places very moving. ... I commend this good 
book to civilians, but more especially to the officers of the Brigade 
of Guards." 

H. B. B. IN " ATLANTIC monthly:'— " hs a comrade in 
arms the writer agrees heart and soul with Mr. Graham. Let us 
have done with illusions and cant, and face what the war has meant 
to us and our civilisation. There can be no better preparation for 
the task than a reading of A Private in the Guards.''^ 

EX-GRENADIER IN " LIVERPOOL POST."—" If you want 
to know what life was like in the Guards get this book ; a Jock wrote 
it, and a Bill Brown is telling you that it is true. What we did and 
suffered and thought and sometimes said is all put down here." 

CAPT. W. INGE IN " COLOGNE POST."—" Mr. Graham's 
cool, unprejudiced impartiality inspires respect throughout." 

COL. E. H. BETHEL IN "SPECTATOR."— " It is important 
that the nation should not have reason to regard military training as 
likely to involve moral deterioration. There is no good reason why 
the contrary should not be the case." 

POSITIVIST REVIEW. — ^" We have now had a considerable 
number of books dealing with the higher issues of the War, but 
there is one that concerns itself almost entirely with the life of the 
private soldier. Allowing for its local background and the short 
period with which it deals, it is a valuable study of his life. . . . 
There is no idealisation of type such as we have from writers like 
Locke, Ian Hay, Hankey, or Patrick McGill." 

DAILY TELEGRAPH. — "It shows what the training of a 
soldier really is, grim in its reality and at the same time full of 
humour. " 

GLASGOW HERALD. — "It should be made a compulsory 
subject of the exit examinations at Sandhurst and Woolwich." 

SUNDAY TIMES. — "The world of literature has gained 
inestimably. Terrible and heartrending are the things he writes. He 
sees, as it were, the sins and obscenities of a national, a universal 
system laid bare." 

NEW WITNESS. — "Mr. Stephen Graham has never written 
anything half as fine as certain magnificently sustained and restrained 
passages in A Private in the Guards. ' Notes on Discipline,' with 

3 



PRESS OPINIONS— Co7zttnued. 

which the book opens, is a magnificent piece of prose. No one 
hitherto has attempted to voice the ' duration ' soldier's position. 
Others have written battle scenes as grimly powerful as ' War the 

Brutaliser ' or ' The Body of Mr. B ' ; others have described 

operations with no less broad a sweep than the skilful commingling 
of the corporate and the personal in ' The Great Advance ' ; but no 
one has expressed the grave and grand emotion of soldiering as 
Mr. Graham does." 

LIVERPOOL COURIER.—'' Hard, indeed, it is to do justice to 
this great book in a short review. There is more of the soul of the 
war in it than in any other written in our times — what the Spaniard 
Ibanez has done in fiction alone excepted. Mr. Graham has written 
about war and the British spirit in war in a vein which often touches 
the note of supreme, of undying literature. If he does not represent 
the whole of that British spirit, it is because he has the defects of his 
virtues, is limited to the scope of his temperament. 

" This much is certain : that here is the narrative of the life of a 
soldier of the line in an English ' crack ' regiment which, unless I 
greatly err, will be read and re-read by posterity." 

THE QUEST OF THE FACE. By Stephen Graham. 

MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.— '' On& of the finest things 
Mr. Graham has given us, brimming over with his characteristics." 

NEW YORK SUN— ''The Quest of the Face imparts a pro- 
found spiritual message. It is simply the essence of the Gospel, 
but so revived as specially to appeal to readers in these days of the 
world's travail. . . . Thus in the author's searching of human faces 
to find a likeness to the ideal face of Christ, the first hopeful glimpse 
he has is in looking upon the dead. Thereafter his quest turns 
toward the weak, the despised and rejected of men. It is only after 
Dushan, a Serb, enters upon the scene, stepping unbidden from the 
crowd, more seeking than sought, that Stephen Graham, using this 
Slav as a medium, plainly delivers his message. It proves to be a 
sympathetic interpretation of the Gospel before it was Westernised, 
yet in terms adapted to the most advanced spiritual comprehension 
of Western Christendom. It is Tolstoyan but wholly original in its 
expression." 

DAILY GRAPHIC— "To the genuine seeker, a treasure." 

PRIEST OF THE IDEAL. By Stephen Graham. 

QUEST. — "An unusual book which will puzzle, exasperate, and 
even possibly disgust the ordinary reviewer because it eludes his 
ordinary pigeon-holes. It is not merely a pilgrimage to the holy 

4 



PRESS OPINIONS—Contmued. 

places of the British Isles, but a spiritual quest of the new ideas 
abroad in England. . . . It is difficult to give an idea of the beauty 
and fertility of the thought of a book which is not the exposition of 
a system but a gospel." 

SPECTATOR— ''The dramatic interest of the book lies in the 
conflict between the men who believe ultimately in the power of 
money and the men who believe ultimately in the power of God. . . . 
Although the two leading characters are not so much persons as 
representatives of two opposed lines of thought, the lesser figures are 
skilfully and convincingly drawn. But the strength of the book lies 
in its handling of the vital problem — the conduct of our daily lives 
... a high-minded and beautiful book." 

MADRAS MAIL. — "This book will be read not only for its 
idealism but for its descriptions of England's 'holy places.' Whether 
exiled or not, the true Briton has always the vastness of York Minster, 
the strength of Durham, the ' all loveliness and aspiration ' of Lincoln 
present to his mind, and appreciates any opportunity of refreshing 
his memory with a new word-picture." 

THE WAY OF MARTHA AND THE WAY OF 

MARY. By Stephen Graham, ^th Impression. 

WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.— "The deepest thing in Chris- 
tianity is personal choice. . . . To Mr. Graham, then, there is not 
one orthodoxy, but many, and the test of them all is the measure in 
which they approach to the universal. . , . That is Mr. Graham's 
message. How he presents it — in this rapt, ardent, piercing, and 
creative description of a strange, wonderful, and alien people — is the 
delight and illumination of his book." 

WITH POOR EMIGRANTS TO AMERICA. By 
Stephen Graham. 

GLASGOW NEWS. — " With a fairly comprehensive knowledge 
of the books on travel in America published in the past twenty-five 
years by English authors, the present writer has not a moment's 
hesitation in declaring that With Poor Emigrants to America is 
immeasurably the best among them all. It is not only an unusually 
informative book'; it is a work of spiritual genius, precious by reason 
of its revelation of as unique and beautiful a character as surely has 
dignified the trade of letters since the period of Lamb or Goldsmith. 
Stephen Graham is something far more rare than an " interpreter of 
Russia " or a philosophical " tramp " ; his quiet voice, if he be spared, 
is likely to sound even more distinctively and more impressively above 
the noisy chatter of his contemporaries. It is perhaps a little un- 

5 



PRESS OPINIONS— C^^/zV;/^^^. 

fortunate that his interest should be so much engaged with Russia, 
for we grudge to Russia an expositor who, we think, might be better 
employed in writing about his own race, but then we must admit that 
but for the influence of Russia we might perhaps have had no Stephen 
Graham." 

NA TION. — " Mr. Stephen Graham is a real super-tramp, and 
in his aspect of the world and his fellows there is always a touch 
of the pilgrim's sanctity. He feels an attraction, partly aesthetic, 
often sentimental, to people of simple and religious life, and especially 
to the Russian peasants, whom he depicts as the simplest and most 
religious of all mankind. He loves the beauty of untouched nature, 
and of man pursuing the primitive and traditional methods of pasture, 
plough, or loom. He is always conscious of a spiritual presence 
behind phenomena, and is strongly drawn by emotions of pity, sym- 
pathy, and fellow-feeling, as by the qualities of humility and indiffer- 
ence to material things. ... Of all English writers on America Mr. 
Graham is almost the only one who tells us certain things that we 
really wanted to know." 

WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS TO JERU- 
SALEM. By Stephen Graham. A,th Impression. 

DAILY MAIL. — "Mr. Stephen Graham is favourably known 
as the interpreter of modern Russia and more particularly of the 
peasant. To that task he brings every accomplishment. He has 
sympathy ; he has the insight of genius and the heart of the poet. 
He has a rare and precious gift of style. . . . He seems to have 
divined by some flash of intuition the psychology of the Russian. 
This book will add greatly to his already great reputation. It is a 
pleasure to praise such work. Here he has given us an extra- 
ordinarily beautiful and interesting account of an extraordinarily 
interesting achievement. ... It breaks entirely fresh ground. It 
makes a deep and universal appeal." 

WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.— ''Th& best book on Russia 
written by an Englishman." 

A TRAMP'S SKETCHES. By Stephen Graham. 
2,rd Impression. 

ACADEMY. — "To have read A Tra7np's Sketches is to have 
been lifted into a higher and rarer atmosphere. It is to have been 
made free, for a few hours at least, of the company of saints and 
heroes. This much we owe to Mr. Graham, who has added to 
English Literature a book that, if we mistake not, is destined to 
endure." 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 

6 



31^.77 -3^ 



V. 



